Thursday, March 31, 2011

Eggs, eggs and more eggs (and a bit of a shower)

I will start with the shower. After being accustomed to the gladiator perch, I moved them to the shower perch, which is only about a foot long. Maui has continued to be the dominant one. She is harrassing Manzi the entire time they are on the perch. She reaches out to touch him and gently grabs his beak. He has taken to holding his head away from her so she struggles to reach his beak. She is pretty persistent and will get right next to him. Manzi isn't sure what to do with her. He still likes his shower though and does not want to leave the perch.

Now on for the fun/exciting/possibly scary news. Maui is laying eggs again. She laid two on the floor of her cage and a third from a perch. The third (well, it was laid second) cracked, but two are in good condition and tucked nicely beneath her.

One of the eggs (the third one laid), has a small crack similar to one of last year's eggs.

It might be due to her homemaking skills. She has strategically shredded every bit of newspaper and cardboard within reach and then even more strategically pushed them out of her "nest" so she can rest cleanly on solid metal. I'm not sure I am really following her strategy. I also question her nest building strategies. I give her boxes to shred. Since Maui has been in breeding mode, her strategy to nestitize a box begins with the bottom. She immediately enters the box and removes the floor. Once that is complete, she will work her way up the sides. Mind you, cardboard boxes are not the most sound structures. Once they have the bottom completely removed they begin to loose their well known stability. That stability is even more questionable when the sides began to be compromised. Within a couple of days (sometimes they last up to three if they are very thick cardboard) they collapse. It is pretty funny because Maui will try and pick the top up and scoot underneath it, but then it is resting solely on her and she doesn't stay still enough for that to last for long.
I let Maui keep two eggs as she is just so cute sitting on them. She is eating and drinking just fine so I'm not worried. She does not mind me reaching my hand in her nest and feeling the two eggs. I have taken her out a couple of times, but it isn't voluntary and she will completely collapse in my hand so I have to scoop her up by her body.
When someone came over, after the first egg was lain, she was upset by it. I was surprised as she is usually so good with company. Anyway, she left her egg and went on top of her cage. That was the first time she left her egg (it had only been 24 hours). After an hour or so she went back into her nest and pushed her egg out halfway across the cage. Then she left her nest again. If she does breed, that is good to note not to let visitors around as I wouldn't want her do that to a fertilized egg.

Lastly, I looked up AI (not artificial intelligence, the other one) to see if that would be possibility because I heard that one parent can raise chicks just fine by themselves. It looks way too complicated and I can imagine Manzi getting pretty ticked off being a test dummy. I work with poultry specialists, but they work with chickens who do not commonly need AI. I need a specialists with parrots. Any volunteers?

4 comments:

Stephanie Pulham said...

I can totally see Manzi on the shower perch going, "It's still worth it, it's worth it!!!"

Adele said...

Steph, you're pretty funny. While saying that it is in a tone of trying to convince himself.

Michael, Kili, Truman said...

So you do want to breed them? What are you going to do with a clutch of little Manzis?

Unknown said...

AI... Yeah, I can see how Manzi might not go for that, although he is rather fond of you.

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