Editorial Feb 2001
Plenty of Clear Eggs This Year?
Who is the guilty partner, the cock or the hen?
Reports of the 2001 breeding season are coming in with fanciers saying it’s a great hobby and would be even better if we could get our birds to breed. Experience has no bearing on this situation except perhaps giving you the patience to carry on regardless.
After the fifth day, when your number one pair has laid the third egg, you check your eggs with your trusty Budgerigar World laser torch expecting to see the first red streak of fertility, however, for many breeders this has resulted in disappointment. There is nothing to be seen and the same applies as the clutch progresses and it’s the same story in many other nests. I am hearing of just two eggs being fertile from 18 laying pairs.
This classic situation is repeated in aviaries and birdrooms throughout the World and the questions on everyone’s lips is, is the cock at fault or was it the hen? Was she "box-bound" and stayed in the box, refusing to emerge for regular mating? Was the cock out of condition and not fit producing sperm even if he was seen to be mating? Who knows, perhaps there are other reasons!
This dilemma is baffling to each and every one of us. Very often it is our top pairs that are involved. If so, the chances are that the next most suitable hen has already been paired and may or probably may not be breeding either. So here we are, the best birds are paired up with no suitable back-ups of either sex.
The main question to ask concerns the behaviour of the unknown guilty partner.
The Cock
Let take the cock and all his possibilities.
- Wrong cycle - not producing sperm.
- Generally out of condition - moulting.
- Buff feathered with coarse long feather covering the vent area and preventing the free passage of sperm.
- Low sexual libido or even frightened of the hen.
- General liking of the nest box and staying 'inside' for long periods and not bothering to mate.
- Round perches, which are shiny at the favourite point of mating. The hen is unable to get a good grip, slips and the cock is dislodged before the deed is done. Loose perches are also a similar cause.
- Blocked vas deferens. These are the tubes from the testes to the exterior, along which the sperm pass.
- Non-completion of the mating process. Some cock birds finish off on the perch.
- The sperm misses the point of contact.
- Temporary sterility following the use of medication.
- Immaturity or too old.
The Hen
Now consider the hen. What possibilities are there that she is the offending partner? Ignoring the non-laying or internal layers, which cannot lay. Her main areas of fault are:
- Aggressive attitude towards the cock. If he cannot give as good as he gets, the hen will then proceed to lay her eggs with mating never actually taking place.
- Lack of broodiness resulting in incubation not taking place.
- Inability to exude fluid down the oviducts when mating takes place, thus preventing live sperm from swimming up the oviduct and reaching the ova. In the early part of the courtship, the hen reaches a point where her cloaca, the vent area, commences a sucking action and the sperm once deposited are sucked into the oviducts from where they swim upwards and fertilise the descending eggs.
- Box-bound. Some hens like to stay in the box, just leaving to excrete and the returning quickly, leaving the cock totally frustrated each time. He may then try and mate in the nest box, sometimes with disastrous results to the eggs.
- Round and loose perches.
- Out of condition - no desire to mate but will still lay.
- Buff feathered.
- Immaturity or too old.
It appears that the cock has more to answer for than the hen but the most pressing question is 'what to do next' once infertility has been established.
THE CHOICES
The initial choices are simple. Either break up the pairing or let them have another round - it all depends on the symptoms that you believe are occurring and only you can decide on these. One suggestion is to record on the breeding card of each pair, the condition and reaction of each bird when they were introduced. This may assist in pointing you in the right direction when infertile eggs result. The cock may be 'coming into' condition or just ‘going out’ of condition when paired and it is too soon or too late for mating. The hen similarly so.
Next consider if one or both birds are immature. Is one a maiden bird or are they both first year birds, making success less likely? Perhaps a second year mature and experienced highly sexed cock should be brought into play as a partner for an aggressive female. Vents should be trimmed if one or both are heavily buff feathered? If the hen is box bound she should be allowed to re-lay but be manually ejected from the nest box and denied re-entry for some minutes each night and morning until mating is seen to take place.
My actions are that I convince myself that it is always worth letting a pair, especially an inexperienced pair, lay again. Perhaps this will jog them into the right cycle this time? Having said this, experience tells me that often or not the second round is also infertile, making it a waste of time and eggs. Perhaps the preferred action should be to split them up for a week or so and try again later. If you are going to do this do not re-flight the birds as they are likely to go into a moult and six weeks or more will be lost, use a stock cage instead.
Good luck to you all as your breeding season progresses.