The main thing that animals in the animal kingdom strive to do is reproduce. Animals try very hard to find a mate and take care of their young.
Knowing this, a budgie abandoning her eggs sounds quite strange and odd. This article looks into why your budgie may have abandoned her eggs.
Table of Contents
Budgie abandoned eggs:
If you’re taking care of a budgie, and the bird abandons her eggs, you’d be right to be worried, here are reasons why your bird did this:
The birds feel disturbed:
Budggies like to be left completely alone when they sit on their eggs, apart from the male bringing the female some food, these birds will like to be left alone.
If you are candling the eggs, touching the eggs, or getting too close to the eggs then this behavior may cause the budgie to abandon her eggs because the eggs are being disturbed.
What to do:
The budgie may or may not return to her eggs after abandoning them.
If she does return to the eggs, but returns to the eggs after too long, then this may be too late and the eggs may have become cold and may have died.
There is nothing you can do in this scenario.
When the birds lay a new clutch leave the eggs completely alone and allow the mother budgie to incubate in peace. All birds, budgies included, enjoy their privacy and should be left alone when nesting.
She laid too many eggs:
When budgies lay eggs they don’t only lay one or two eggs, these birds can lay a clutch of eggs and a clutch of eggs can consist of 4 to 6 eggs.
The budgie mother will not start sitting on the eggs immediately after laying the first egg, she will only sit on the eggs just before the last one is laid.
As a result, she may only realize that she has laid too many eggs after she has laid them all.
If she realizes that she can’t sit on all eggs that she laid, that she can’t give enough warmth to all of them, and realizes that she won’t be able to feed all the birds once they hatch then she will abandon some of the eggs and will only sit on the other eggs.
What to do:
The eggs that she has stopped incubating may not necessarily be bad eggs, if you want these eggs to hatch you can hatch them yourself and raise them yourself as the mother won’t be able to raise all the birds.
To do this, incubate the eggs in an incubator and look for a formula for the birds for when they do hatch. Other budgies in your care may help raise the baby budgies as well.
The eggs went bad:
Your mother budgie may know something about the eggs that you don’t, she may for some reason realize that her eggs are now bad and may abandon the eggs and not sit on them anymore.
She needs to abandon the eggs as sitting on bad eggs is a waste of her body heat, she would rather share this body heat with the eggs that aren’t bad. She may even break her bad eggs if she feels the need to.
What to do:
If you think that the eggs went bad then you would need to crack the eggs and throw them away.
You can candle the eggs before you break and throw them away to see if the eggs really did go bad.
Candling the eggs involves shining a flashlight or a candle behind the egg to see if the eggs really are bad.
If the egg still has a visible vein network connected to a mass then the eggs are likely, not bad, but, if the eggs have no vein network and mas inside then they are likely bad.
If you don’t crush and throw the bad eggs away then bacteria can get into the egg and cause the egg to release a foul smell. The bacteria can also cause the eggs to release a yellow flour-smelling liquid.
It would be best to throw the eggs outside and then seal the garbage bin so wild animals or stray animals can’t get to them.
If you enjoyed this article then you may also be interested in other bird related articles. Here are some articles that you may be interested in: Blood In Cockatiel Poop, Conure Poop Red, Sun Conure Poop Red, Why Is My Birds Poop Red, Bird Bleeding From Nose, Will A Budgie Sit On Infertile Eggs?,