Budgies Laying Eggs.

Question
Hi Christopher,

My female budgie is about 1.5 years old.  She has a male partner. Five days ago,I found a cracked egg at the bottom of the cage.  I took out the ruined egg and hurriedly put in a nestbox because I read budgies lay one egg every other day to form a clutch.  She's been prepping the nestbox ever since but hasn't laid any more eggs.  Today (5 days later), I found another egg at the bottom of the cage.  I took it and placed it in the nestbox.  The female budgie went in the nestbox, rolled the egg around a bit, sat on it for 30 seconds, and then went back out and hasn't gone back in.  I have 2 questions:  Is it normal for budgies to lay one egg every 5 days?  Can the egg still hatch if the mother doesn't incubate it soon, or should I manually incubate it?  Thanks.

Answer
 Hello Sarah,

There is really no need to put any ruined eggs inside of the nest box, budgies like most birds will not even attempt to incubate broken eggs. The fact that your budgie is not laying a egg everyday is perfectly normal. Generally a budgie will lay a egg a day for 5-6 days and then start incubating them after the last one is in the box. The hen will need to incubate the eggs within the week in order for the egg to stand a chance. If you are going to manually incubate a budgie egg, you will need a incubator and lots of time to hand-feed the baby bird once it is born.. If you are up to the task of feeding a baby bird 8 times a day for the first few weeks, then manually incubating the eggs would be of no worry. I would "candle" the egg's that are being laid (BEFORE, they are broken) to ensure that they are in fact fertile. If the eggs being laid are fertile, then it is likely that your hen is just not "Broody", another word for "good mother".

I suspect that you will find that the eggs are not fertile, if she is a first time breeding bird (you have not raised budgies off of her) then this could all be a learning process for her and may soon overcome her unawareness and go on to become a fantastic mother bird. Give the parent birds plenty of privacy and let them do their thing, you will have some baby birds before you know it!

P.S. - Nothing is wrong with your bird for not laying an egg every day. Provide plenty of spray millet and cuttle bone to the mating pair as this will help give the needed nutrients that they use during this time, it is highly stressful for birds during the breeding or molting season. They prefer privacy and somewhere relatively quiet or free from excessive traffic (kids, dogs,cats, etc.)

Best of luck!