Breeding Grasskeets

[cindy]

they usually lay an egg a day sometimes 2 to 5 eggs in total. or 4 are about average.

[dunker817]

I am offering egg food, two brands of seed mix, and Harrisons pellets these are every day. And during they week I offer fresh fruits and veggies and kale. She also has mineral block that chews on from time to time. She is not on any type of supplement calcium or otherwise.

Another question. Penny sits on her egg during the day but roosts with her mate at night. Will this harm the egg if its fertile?

[cindy]

Is she actually sitting on it or near it. Some hens spend time in the box, some a short time others longer when they start laying eggs. She may not be done laying. Once laid the egg is viable for 7 days...see if she continues to lay, right around egg 3 or 4 she should be sitting all the time.

[dunker817]

cindy, you are spot on with your description of what to look for. The other day I checked on the egg and found that she laid three more eggs. She is a very devoted mommy. She makes mad dashes for the seed cup and then heads right back to her eggs. When I candled egg number one it was not fertile. So I am hoping I get at least one fertile egg.

[Sojourner]

dunker817

One thing you might do is place a feed cup close to the nest so she doesn't have far to go for feed. Ditto water.

I use the ABBA mineral mix for my guys. It has a couple different sources of calcium in it plus trace minerals.

Now my finches will not touch anything that has become powdered. So they will pick out the pieces of the mineral mix and leave a fine powder behind.

One day I accidentally dumped that powder on top of the mineral mix in my parakeets' cage. Not really thinking. But having done that I left it. Prior to that my parakeets were not using the mineral mix a lot.

Well lo and behold, the parakeets do the exact opposite of my finches with regard to powdered ABBA mineral mix. They ate that top 1/2" layer of powder right off the top of the mineral mix in nothing flat.

So now I'm contemplating sifting the mineral mix and giving the finer particles to the parakeets and keeping the bits and pieces for the finches. (you could also put it in a dedicated-to-pet-purposes coffee grinder and grind it up that way).

You can get the ABBA mineral mix from Glam Gouldians. It is one of 4 calcium sources I keep in the cage at all times.

However I imagine you're in more of a hurry than that, plus who knows, maybe my parakeets are little weirdos, going for the powdered mineral mix.

What I would suggest is you keep eggshells from making breakfast or baking, rinse them out well immediately and microwave for a couple of minutes to sterilize. Break them up with the back of a soup spoon and fill a treat cup with them, put it near the nest.

If you're interested in seeing the results, you could crush or grind some eggshell to powder as well (coarse powder) and fill another treat cup with that and put both in the cage side by side. See if they prefer one over the other.

I use "thumb" cups like this:

http://glamgouldians.com/img/treatcupxl.jpg

However they seem to have totally disappeared off the market recently. I wish I had 100 of these, seriously. At any rate look for something similarly sized. There are smaller versions about half the width. I don't know how well parakeets will take to them - and aren't grasskeets a little bigger than budgerigars?

Oyster shell for chickens is also a good source of calcium but it needs to be broken up more for smaller birds. Again - I use a coffee grinder dedicated to pet use for that task.

There is also a powdered cuttlebone offered for sale. I haven't used it because my finchy guys don't do powder, but perhaps my budgies will. After I watch them for awhile with the sifted mineral mix I may add that to their regimen (or more likely grind my own up) but they would still need cuttlebone and mineral block for beak conditioning.

Might be yet another way to get more calcium into your laying hen though, to offer powdered or crushed cuttlebone.

Don't forget the D3 also. I use the Oasis VitaDrops for D3. My only gripe with the VitaDrops is that they use Vit A instead of beta carotene. I feel the latter is not only sufficient unto the task, it is safer to boot. You can't OD on beta carotene.

[dunker817]

Sojourner

Thank you for the information. I will look into the thumb cups. At the moment I use the bottoms of flower pots to put their egg food and mineral mix. Today I mixed some of the Abba mineral mix with some hatch egg shells and trace mineral powder and charcoal. I will see how they like it. They don't care for bee pollen that's for sure.

Since I started this thread my female grasskeet has laid a few clutches of eggs. None were viable. However, about two weeks ago I found my pair mating and not long after she laid eggs again. On Monday I will candle the eggs to see if they are viable. Even though Penny, my female, is sitting on a clutch, her and Henny, my male, keep mating. The way things are going I will eventually have babies I am thinking. If I get viable eggs I will let everyone know. The suspense is terrible.

[Sojourner]

dunker817

I would suggest NOT using charcoal as a prophylactic (just-in-case) sort of treatment. It doesn't just "filter out" bad things - it filters out EVERYTHING.

Such as vitamins and any necessary meds.

I bought some back when I first joined this forum because a lot of people recommend putting it in every batch of their home-made mineral mixes, but after looking into it more I think it is counterproductive to use it except when there is a specific reason one might need to detox their birds.

So I keep it on hand for emergencies, but otherwise don't use it.

There is a tiny bit in the ABBA mineral mix but its so far down the list of ingredients that I live in hope its not enough to do any harm. I suspect it is on the list for people who think they have to give their birds charcoal every day - when actually the opposite is the case.

[wilkifam]

Mine lay every other day, usually 4 to 5 per clutch. I just had 4 hatch this week. I have a second pair actively feeding each other and going in and out of next box. They had a clutch of infertile that I removed a few weeks ago. Think they are going to start another one soon.

[dunker817]

I will remove the mineral mix with the charcoal just in case.

As nature would have it, the eggs are duds. I candled them last night. Last time I candled Penny had three eggs and last night she had a fourth. So I will let her sit on her eggs for another week and candle them again to see if this new egg is viable. Not sure which one it is. She moves them around quite a bit.

[dunker817]

Sojourner

Hello. I have a question because I am in a quandary. Penny is sitting on eggs that when candled last week were not showing signs of being viable so I let her keep sitting on them thinking she would not lay eggs while nesting. Well I was wrong. Yesterday she laid two eggs out in the cage away from her nest box. So letting her nest has not stopped the laying. Should I let her keep sitting on the eggs or just pull them and remove the nest box all together? I put the nest box in so she wouldn't lay eggs in her food dish and hoping to maybe get a new baby bird along the way.

Thanks,

Layne

[Sojourner]

dunker817

I've been struggling to keep my guys from raising viable offspring because what would I do with related birds in the same cage? It's hard enough to keep the non-related birds from breeding - adding genetic disorders from sibling matings on top of things is right out.

It's a struggle, and one that apparently is never really won. I had thought to let them sit and replace the eggs with fakes - and at this point I'm pretty sure they're about to hatch because I've had one of my "drifty" periods and I'm pretty sure its been a couple of weeks by now and I still don't have the dummies. Well, no dummies here except myself at any rate.

If you leave a nest in they will continue to lay. Your hen may be dropping eggs outside the nest by accident - mine did that with one egg and there are at least 3 in the nest now. Never let things slip out of your grasp or you'll end up like me, dreading that her eggs may be viable and I've mucked about too long to get the dummies in here in time. I am just going to dump the entire nest when I clean the cage today and not put it back in.

I hate to do that as those eggs may be close to hatching by now but it is my own fault. And never put a nest in there again unless I already have the fake eggs and all other mechanisms to stop the laying have failed. I have no place to put accidentally bred related birds. Mea culpa.

Regulate temperature. My birds are far less likely to lay when temps are stable below 70F. When I moved them here from my son's house, I figured no problem as I keep the house at 68F during the winter - but it turns out they are in the Banana Republic part of this room - a warm pocket. So that triggered laying again.

Remove any feed cup even remotely large enough to use as a nest, plus any actual nest boxes. I use biscuit cups, finger cups, and GlamGouldians has a new small round "mineral cup" I aim to try given that my favorite thumb cups are out of production and no longer obtainable. The egg-shaped cups are out, I have found the odd egg in one of those so I stopped using them.

Regulate length of time they are exposed to light. I cover mine with a cheap light blocking curtain when the sun goes down and remove the cover in the morning.

Preferably keep the noise down in that room after dark as well. I'm getting a bluetooth transmitter for my TV so I can listen with my bluetooth headphones and not disturb the birds after dark.

And finally if all else fails, HAVE SOME DUMMY EGGS ON HAND and let them sit, removing new eggs and replacing with a dummy until they stop laying, then let them sit until they give up.

Hopefully that will interrupt the egg laying cycle when all else fails.

Just don't be like me and put the nest in BEFORE you have the dummies.

[dunker817]

Thank you again for the advice. Penny has not let me near the nest box. She has caught on that I am an egg thief. Last night she finally came out to eat and I was able to pull open the door on the nest box. As it turns out the eggs lying on the cage floor came from the box. She ditched two of her eggs on her own. The two in the nest box were on opposite sides of the box. One was left where she likes to sit so I am thinking she abandoned one and kept the one to sit on. I keep my furnace set on 66 but I live in Texas and we have mild winters so sometimes the house is a little warmer on its own. I will take down the nest box on my next day off. Penny has been making up for lost time. She is eating like a pig and really enjoying her oyster shell mineral mix. I will check out smaller seed cups too.

Thanks again.
Layne