19 year old laying eggs

[dudeperson3]

My 19 year old grey, Sterling, was acting weird last weekend. She seemed to be huddling in the corner of her cage on Sunday. Tuesday, my mom sent me a picture showing TWO eggs in the bottom of Sterling's cage. I quickly searched on the internet and found conflicting information but it seemed like leaving Sterling and her eggs alone. Today (Saturday), we came back from doing errands and we found a THIRD egg!!

 

We need some advice!

 

Here's more information: Sterling LOVES me, tolerates my mother, drew blood from my dad's hand a few years ago, and is always interested in family and friends that come over, including the occasional retired racing Greyhound foster that is curious about her. She sits near the edge of the cage where the Greyhound's noses can just reach and will stick her foot out and grab the end of the dog's nose. The dog(s) freak out of course and then totally leave Sterling alone! Its pretty funny.

-We give her magazines and newspaper to rip up when we are not around and she loves to make a giant mess of it all, that is, after we clean her cage of course!

-In the past few weeks, my mom (who is home the most) noticed Sterling on the bottom of her cage ripping up newspaper and magazines into a pile in the corner but never really thought about it since we thought Sterling was a he. We never had hi...HER tested but we thought that Sterling may be a female because her eyes were lightly colored when she was young.

-We also made the connection: we have a male Canary that sings a lot! They are both within eyesight of each other in the big downstairs room. We used to have an albino Cockatiel in the same big room about a year ago and she laid a few eggs. Maybe its the Canary?

 

We need help! We don't want to anything weird to happen to our beloved Grey!!!

[Dave007]

Nothing weird is gonna happen to your grey. What happened does periodically happen with older birds even if there's no mate around. An clutch can be 2 or 3 ad sometimes even 4 eggs. What your bird was doing was her following nature's method of nesting. she was trying to buid a nest and they use anything that's around. The reason that all the eggs should remain with the female is because her next step is incubating them. When she's doing this, she'll have no desire to lay more. After approx 28 to 32 days, she'll know the eggs aren't fertile and she'll start to push them away and ignore them. That amont of time that's passed will allow her internal organs to gain strength and muscle tone. Also, with most adult birds that have an occasional clutch, they'll usually have no more. Just don't make a big fuss with her. Don't constantly pay a lot of attention to her. Let her do what she needs to do. If a 4th egg comes along, don't worry about it. No more will come.

 

****We also made the connection: we have a male Canary that sings a lot! They are both within eyesight of each other in the big downstairs room. We used to have an albino Cockatiel in the same big room about a year ago and she laid a few eggs. Maybe its the Canary?***

 

What other birds do around other birds doesn't cause birds to do the same thing. There's a certain time of the year when greys are ready to breed and it has nothing to do with other birds.

 

 

By the way, the eye color at any age has nothing to do with the sex of the bird. It only indicates the approximate age of the bird. Young, adolscent, adult.

[dudeperson3]

All very good information!! Thank you so much Dave!! I, WE really appreciate it! I'll keep this updated if anything else worth noting occurs.

[Dave007]

All very good information!! Thank you so much Dave!! I, WE really appreciate it! I'll keep this updated if anything else worth noting occurs.

 

PS---I forgot to tell you that the reason for leaving the eggs with her is because if you take them away immediately, that'll only cause her to lay some more eggs quickly which isn't something your bird or any bird should do. She won't replace any eggs that are already there.

[Ray P]

Hay dudeperson3 welcome to the grey forum.