First eggs at 10 y.o.

[shvlaguy]

Hello all. I am new to the group. I raised my Cleo from baby and was surprised to find an egg in her cage about 3 weeks ago. She seemed to ignore it so I removed it. Since then she had laid 3 more which I let her sit on for a few days each. The last one, I replaced with a large pecan and she acceped it as an egg and sits on it all day and night with a few breaks to eat and drink. I don't know if she is eating enough though as she seems to appear a little skinny. If I put her food bowl where she sits on the egg, she seems to gorge herself and clucks and makes noises similar to when I hand fed her when she was a baby. I was wondering if anybody else has had their hen lay infertile eggs and the right thing to do about it. I have read several conflicting articles about weather or not to remove eggs. Will she get tired of it eventually and abandon it? I dont want her to mourn losing them or if it even matters. Any advise on this would be appreciated.

[Rachel]

Hi shvlaguy,

 

From old experience (and in my opinion), it is best to let your bird run its natural course of laying the number of eggs building inside her and let her sit on them until she loses interest. It is hard to know how many eggs she may need to lay, maybe someone on the forum knows an average number of eggs greys can lay.

 

Sometimes if you remove eggs they will continue to try to lay and you can have trouble with egg binding or calcium deficiency. For this reason make sure you are offering her extra calcium in her diet.

 

If her hormones have kicked in she will feel the need to lay and sit on eggs (as she is doing), so its best to let nature take its course.

 

I hope this was of some help,

Rachel

[Guest]

Hi and welcome here Svlaguy

I hope you will enjoy this forum.

 

From what I've been reading about this, I think Rachel gave you the best advise. Just let your bird run its natural course

[shvlaguy]

Thanks for the replies. One other detail about my Cleo that's interesting is that her mother amputated her feet just below her knees. She doesn't mind though. She just doesn't have any perches but she can balance herself on a shower curtain rod. But there's no place to attach a leash if I wanted to flight train her.

[Guest]

And so we see once again how in nature everything (and everybody) gets accustomed to restrictions and adopt to living life according to it

 

Beautiful example, Shvlaguy