Breeding English Budgies

[lsbudgie]

Any advice on successfully breeding an English Budgie pair? I have had several and either they never lay eggs or they lay eggs and they are not viable. My latest pair are 2 yrs old and the female goes into the nest box but just never lays eggs and her cere is brown so I know she is ready for breeding. All my other birds, lovebirds, budgies, cockatiels, doves and finches never have problems giving me babies but I just have no luck when it comes to English Budgies. Any advice would be much appreciated. Thanks

[CraftQueen]

Aren't the English Gorgeous birds! They are very layed back compared the the normal parakeets we usually know as pets.

Sometimes it helps if you put the normal keets next to the english. I bought some OLD english a couple of years ago and according the the bands on the males they were already 6 years old, the girl I got them from said they were 2 years old. The english seemed to Bark rather than chat like the normals. They did learn to chat from the normals.

But I've only had sucess in breeding the smaller English, which I'm sure were half english. People say to me all the time they mix them to get a bigger normal. My small english pair would lay 10 eggs and hatch 7 of them, some babies were large and some looked more like normals(the hens were the smaller ones).

I had one english that was sold to me as a normal and I just though he was a healthy keet and after I got the other english I could tell he was too. I had him with a normal, they were together for 2 years, very well bonded, but when she started laying eggs she got very fiesty, she wouldn't feed the babies and they died one by one as they hatched well before I knew how to hand feed or much about breeding period. She bit 2 of his toes off and was suddenly aggressive toward him and he was so sweet. I had to separate them and now he has one of the Old hens. Sometimes they mate, she layed one egg when I first got her, but I think she is well past her time to do so.

I have been told to get nothing older than 2 years if you want to breed. Normal keets should be retired at age 6 for males and age 4 for hens, but I think for English it is much shorter.

I had another man tell me to just put ACV (apple cider vinegar) in their water to make them breed. But the ratio seems like a lot to me, it was 8 ouces of water and 2 teaspoons ACV. Where for all birds as daily water, 1 tsp. ACV per pint of water.

Good Luck. English are Beautiful.