Monday, September 27, 2010

An Egg

Last night Maui laid an egg. Now I know for sure that she is a female. I was thinking of retesting both her and Manzi with a DNA test. She was tired today and napping, but besides that she seems to be in fine health. Her vent appears to be stretched out and gunky (I will only post a photo upon request; I have one, but am not sure if anyone is really interested). I do have pictures of the egg. Here it is on the bottom of her cage:

To help know the size, I placed it next to a quarter for comparison:
The shell was cracked, but it had fallen to the grate when it was laid. My roommate, who works with avian nutrition, examined it and thinks the shell is much too thin. I am not expecting Maui to raise an unfertilized egg, but in the future it will probably be necessary to supplement with calcium. Maui only lost about 10 grams after laying the egg (I weigh her about every other day). I couldn't weigh the egg as some liquid already leaked out of it. I did cut off Maui's access to her nesting site in the bottom shelf of my cabinets. Hopefully Maui will not lay any more eggs until she and Manzi are having connubial relations.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I wish Manzi can be more friendly and become a good partner to Maui.

Tamba

Stephanie Pulham said...

That is a pretty big egg. Much bigger than I thought it would be.

Jen said...

fried eggs for breakfast?

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