Can budgies have a successful clutch of babies without a nestbox?

[henseman]

I've been reading that in order for budgies to breed, they need the proper environment with a nestbox being part of that environment.
I have taken in a bonded pair or proven pair in August of this year and didn't know too much about them. Around the middle of September, the female started to mess around the bottom of the cage, tearing up the newspaper that covered the metal grate on the bottom. I didn't think much of it as I'm new to raising budgies, until one day I noticed her laying on the bottom with her eyes closed. Thinking the worst, I touched her beak and she sprang to life and flew to her perch, at which point I noticed an egg on the exposed grate.

I was under the impression that they would not breed unless there was a nestbox available to them. She has since laid a total of 9 eggs, the first one and the third one got eaten and another one that she had laid on the far side of the cage showed no signs of fertility(veins not visible to a bright light source). I'm not sure which of the eggs should be hatching first as I was afaid to disturb the eggs to mark them in the fear that she would abandon them. She now has a total of five eggs left that she huddles under her constantly.

My concern is, will she be able to hatch these outside of a nestbox or will all her efforts be wasted? If she continues to sit on them well past the due dates, will they go rotten and become a source of bacteria for her and her mate if they decide to eat them or if they get broken?

Hope to get some answers soon.
Thank you

[Marrie]

They can and will lay when the mood strikes them - even without mating, the female can still decide to lay. Not providing a nest box, nesting materials or other things can help prevent it, but the only 100% way is to not house a male/female together. It is typically recommended if you are going to keep the clutch to provide them with a box after they lay, if you don't want to keep it when she lays you can boil the eggs, or replace them with plastic replicas (just removing them without a replacement will just make her lay more). Not sure how long eggs can stay in, but usually people are told to leave the eggs until the female bores of them.

Make sure to provide fresh, soft foods if any do hatch as it's easier for them to feed the chicks than with an all seed or pellet diet. Also, her calcium stores will have been depleted, fresh kale and other calcium rich foods are good to provide for her to restore them.

Hopefully a breeder will pop by soon with some more advice.

[henseman]

Thank you for your response. She is still laying on the eggs. She hasn't laid anymore in 4-5 days now, so I hope she figures five is enough for now. I am giving her kale and other greens and am going to give her and her mate some eggs and crushed egg shell in the morning.

I had tried putting in a couple of different types of nesting units and put extra newspapers shredded up for her to place in if she wanted to, but she showed no interest. I did however put in a small saucer with some oats for bedding and spooned the eggs into it and she immediately hunkered down and swept them under her body. I've been talking to a retired avian vet in the US and asked him if it was too late to transfer the eggs into a proper wooden nestbox and was told it would probably be alright as long as I thoroughly washed up with anti-bacterial soap prior to handling the eggs, so I'm going to clean the cage up tomorrow and introduce the mother to her eggs in the nestbox and hope everything goes ok and she keeps on laying on them til they hatch.

Brian

[henseman]

Thanks again.

Brian

[ArticunoGail]

Good luck on that, Brian, and keep us updated.

If you want to know more about budgies, I suggest you take a wander around this forum, look at other peoples questions and pput up any you have yourself. We are all willing to give our advice, some of us know more than others, but the more you learn, the better you can care for your birds, and with more confidence!

Good luck again and welcome to the site.

ArticunoGail