Suprise egg! But is it fertile?

**pinkspore** · 10-14-2011, 03:11 PM

My ~15? year old female cockatiel surprised me four days ago with an egg. I've only had her a year or so, and my birds were on a strict 12-hour sleep schedule until a couple of months ago when they ate the blinds in the bird room.

Eliot, the female, was dumped at the bird store last year by someone who said she was "like maybe 15." Eliot's best buddy is Ernie, my old man cockatiel. He will be 26 in January. I've seen the two of them mate a few times, but I wasn't really worried about egg-laying. Eliot has been carefully rolling her egg around and sitting on it, with 90-degree weather right now it probably doesn't need too much warmth. I've even seen Ernie sitting on the egg.

I have very mixed feelings about the whole thing. On the one hand, I NEVER intended to breed birds. Most of my animals are rescues and I certainly don't plan to add to an overpopulation problem by making more animals. On the other hand, it would be bizarre and incredible if this egg actually was fertile. Ernie survived more than two decades of nonstick cookware, new large appliances, air fresheners, a self-cleaning oven, and my mother's obsessive scented-candle phase. His cage was always in the kitchen, he ate nothing but seeds, had no toys to play with, and got absolutely no exercise. If he can live through that for his first 23 years, live past his 25th birthday, and still fertilize an egg, he must be some kind of super-cockatiel.

This thing can't possibly be fertile, can it? I've shone my penlight through it a few times, and there doesn't seem to be anything in there so far. On Day 1 the entire thing looked completely emtpy. Day 2 there was a small shadowy round spot at one end. Day 4 the spot seems to be larger and more distinct. I have never candled eggs before, and I'm not even sure if it is too soon to tell whether the egg is fertile or not.