As budgie owners who chose to set up our birds to breed, we want to have the best outcome possible. Each life is precious, and if we can help to save a chick it is going to be our top priority! One of the biggest we can do to help safe a developing egg or hatched budgie chick is by fostering them to another pair when they are being neglected, or abused by their parents.

Fostering successfully requires knowledge of what to do, and not do. Here we will go over some of the essential things to do before you move any egg or chick to a new foster parent.

Like people, each budgie has its own individual personality. What so many fail to acknowledge is the huge impact this can have when breeding any animal, including budgies. The personality of the parents, will have a direct impact on the breeding outcome, and 

If you do not see the benefit of this, consider these questions:

• If you breed a overly anxious hen, is it not logical that it is much more likely she will abandon her clutch then a more balanced, at ease one?

• If you pair an aggressive male up to breed, does it not make sense that he would be much more likely to attack his mate or chicks?
• If you have a female that could never be tamed despite a great deal of effort and is now a breeding bird for that reason, what are the odds of her chicks ever taming well and being good pets with the personality they will likely get from her?
  

With so many good breeding birds available, there really is no excuse to breed birds with bad personality traits. Not only are you setting up your breeding program for failure, but in addition you are purposely producing more chicks with these undesirable personality traits, which very few families will be looking for in pets. Please think about this seriously, personalities are inherited. If you do not like the personalities of the parents, the odds are by good that you will not like the personalities of their chicks either. 

On the contrary, when you select mentally balanced breeding birds with good qualities they will be better and more trusting parents. You will greatly reduce the chance of aggression of your pair toward each other and their chicks, decrease the odds of them abandoning their nest, and have a much more trusting and well rounded pair all around during the breeding period. These we the birds that will have babies that make good pets, and future breeders as well.

How good of a parent does a 15 year old child make when compared with a 25-30 year old adult? The same is true of your pair.  If you breed an immature pair, prepare yourself to step in and help raise the chicks just as you no doubt would with a human child.. Make sure you have a pair that is at least 1 year in age before conditioning and introducing a nest box to encourage breeding

In addition, without a good breeding diet even a mature pair will not be able to raise their chicks. If they do not have a good diet to maintain their own bodies, how can they hope to keep growing chicks alive and growing?

Please make sure you are not only offering but that your pair is readily eating daily a balanced breeding diet daily. You can see some basic details of what this includes on this page: A Budgie Breeding Diet.

Budgies are creatures of habit like all other parrot species. By starting off with a good breeding routine you are avoiding so many problems that novice breeders run into very quickly.

Budgies have no problem with you checking their nest box and maintaining it so long as they trust what you are doing to begin with. This is a common myth many claim when they set themselves up for failure by not gaining the trust of the pair until it is far along in the breeding process. How can you gain this trust? By showing them you mean no harm and are just a part of the routine right from the beginning. Do not wait until your hen is laying eggs or sitting on chicks to start checking her box at least once a day.

From the day you set your pair up to breed get them used to your presence. You do not want to be overly intrusive,, but you do want them to understand that your checking on the nest box is completely normal and no harm at all will come of this.

Begin by making a light tap on the outside of the box with whatever saying you would like. We like to say "scoot scoot little girl" etc, and then slowly open the lid. When they are first getting settled in the box they will hop right out as soon as you do this. By encouraging this behavior with your pair, you will encourage them to do this through out the breeding process for nest checks and cleanings. If you have a mature, well conditioned pair that is truly ready to breed this will not discourage them in the slightest from doing so.

All of our experienced hens know the routine. When they hear us coming they automatically hop out of the next box in the morning and in the evening for these checks, it is completely normal and they trust us to do so. 

Cultivate the same routine with your pair. Do not check at random times constantly at all times of the day, but tather give them a routine unless there is the unusual cause to do so. This way when something is a bit off they will trust you are just checking on things, and that everything will be right back to normal as soon as you close the nest box door.

Most budgies make excellent parents. Unless you absolutely need too, there is no reason to move eggs or  chicks around from nest to nest. Why? Because keeping nests separate will help prevent any unexpected bacteria or virus outbreaks from infecting more than one nest. It also avoids confusion regarding who's chicks are who's if you are planning on keeping and breeding the babies in the future, and foster before the age where the chicks can be banded.

There are some circumstances in which it is very wise to foster eggs or chicks to another pair however. Some of these include:

• Your pair is in poor health, or on a poor diet.
  
• A large clutch of 7 or more chicks
  
• The chicks are being plucked
  
• The chicks are not being fed well
  
• The female dies during the incubation period, or when the chicks are too young for the male to care for and still need heat from mom (younger that 2 weeks)
  
• The hen abandons the clutch
  
• The hen laid an irregular clutch, causing excessively large age gaps between the chicks hatch dates

Unless you are prepared with a brooder, the hand feeding supplies and the experience needed to keep the eggs and chicks alive without their budgie parents these are just a few of the most common examples of why urgent fostering is needed. Aggression, neglect and plucking should never be taken lightly. Immediate action should be taken right away to get the babies out of harms way, and into a safe situation. We will now consider some details when, and how to foster successfully when one of these circumstances comes up.

Before fostering eggs, it is important to consider if the foster hen is actually incubating the eggs in her box as of yet.

A hen can be sitting in her box all day, and even physically sitting over the eggs without actually incubating them. Incubation requires skin on egg contact, and many hens wait until 3 or more eggs are laid before beginning to incubate seriously, despite spending a lot of time in the box. Some hens will start incubating from the first egg, and some will not start until the last egg.

You will need to know each of your individual hens, and what they prefer to do as there are no hard and fast rules in this regard.

It is also important to remember that an egg will not begin to develop unless it is incubated though.. For this reason you can remove a freshly laid fertile egg before it is incubated if you have a good reason to do so, and as long as you keep it in a room with a steady cooler temperature and turn it it once a day to prevent it from settling on one side, for up to two weeks it will remain viable for up to two weeks and develop normally as soon as it is placed under a hen to be incubated.

If you are fostering eggs that have already begun to develop from incubation however, it is essential that you give them to a hen that is actively incubating. These eggs will need a steady heat source right away to keep the embryo from dying. A developing budgie chick can chill to death in as little as 30 minutes in an average home, and even quicker if the temperature is is 70 degrees or less so use plenty of caution during the transfer process from one hen to another, and be very careful about the egg/ chick temperature as we will discuss below farther.

If someone put something cold on your stomach would you notice? Obviously you would be able to tell immediately! Do you think your budgie hen will notice any less? If she has a nest full of warm chicks and eggs rest assured she us going to be able to tell if you stick a cold egg or chick in her box, and she could possibly then toss out.

Why is this? In order to maintain the eggs and the chicks at the right temperature a budgie hen has what is called a "brood patch". This is an area of bare skin on the lower belly with lots of extra blood vessels to pass body heat directly from her body to her babies. 

Many people mistakenly think that a budgie can smell an egg or chick that is not hers, when in reality they set the fostering up for failure by putting a cold egg or chick in her box which is painfully obvious. For this reason it is essential to warm any eggs or chicks if they are not being transferred directly from one hen to another.  

How can you warm the eggs and chicks? Very carefully, and very slowly to avoid shock to the developing egg or hatched chick. 

After washing your hands very well hold the egg or chick it gently in your warm hands. This will slowly warm the chick/egg to at least your body temperature, which while is still colder than your hens will not be so obvious. Again though especially with eggs, please be sure to use a natural soap and wash, wash and then wash again before handling them. Eggs are porous, and will absorb any residue or oils on your hands, so be as clean and sanitary as possible if you need to handle them. 

Once they feel nice and warm to the touch, carefully place them into your fosters nest and keep a close eye to make sure they are accepted. If the hen immediately goes in and incubates the eggs/chicks it is an excellent sign that she has accepted them as her own. Keep a close eye on her for at least an hour or so to make sure she does not reject them. If after this amount of time she is still caring for them as her own, the odds are very slim that you will have any problems after this period.

If you are intending on the foster pair to actually raise any eggs/chicks you are planning on giving them,  you need to consider if they can actually raise them and if it is wise to do so with any potential age gaps between their eggs/chicks and the ones you will be adding.

While it is true that budgies can raise large numbers of chicks with a exceptional diet, not every pair is able to do so in terms of health or stamina.

You will need to take into consideration any large age gaps of the potential chicks that have already hatched, or will be hatching soon.

An ideal clutch size is 4-6. If a potential foster pair already has this number of fertile eggs or hatched chicks, adding an additional burden of fosters should be used as a last resort only. A hen can only fit so many eggs under her body to incubate properly, and having too many chicks will m

If you have a pair that have laid an infertile clutch, or only have a few chicks this would be an ideal foster situation!

There is a natural time period for most clutches from beginning to end, and for the average clutch the egg laying/incubating is timed perfectly.  Many hens will not start incubating their eggs until 3 or so eggs are laid and since the average clutch is 5-6, the age difference of most chicks in any given clutch is less than a week between the oldest and youngest. This is a perfect age range where the chicks can develop very close to each other.

While most hens will take on any additional eggs or chicks you give them when done properly, it is very important to consider the age gaps between the eggs in development or chicks if they are already hatched if all of the chicks are to survive.


Some ideal fostering examples for eggs:

• A hen that has laid an infertile clutch
  
• A hen that only had a few fertile eggs, which have less than a weeks time difference in development from the ones you would like to foster

• If the development gap is large, you have another pair to foster the chicks to once they hatch if needed
  

Some ideal fostering examples for chicks:

• Your pair has only a few chicks of close age to the foster chicks

• The age difference is big between the oldest and youngest potential foster chick, but you are planning on pulling the oldest chicks for hand feeding at the time of fostering the younger ones to your pair
  

Having too large of an age gap between the chicks as they hatch and develop can create a number of problems.