Bad Eggs and Too Many, Advice?

[crookedbird]

Context: I have a female GCC, Poe, who was a chronic egg-layer. She has a mate, so it makes sense (we thought they were both boys when we got her). After struggling to discourage her laying, I decided last year to give her a nest box in case she decided to incubate, hoping raising chicks would prevent her from laying for a longer period of time. Well, it worked. She broke the first 3 eggs of the clutch (which I replaced with fakes), but incubated the last 3. The eldest of the 3 unfortunately failed to hatch, but the other two hatched perfectly fine and were raised by my conure couple for 2 months before I gave the chicks to people who know how to hand-tame them and find them homes. It's been roughly a year and half (the largest amount of time she's gone without laying) and I got lazy about simulating winter hours for my birdies, so my GCC decided to start laying again. I tried to do the same thing. She broke the first 4 this time and I replaced them as usual. She has since had FIVE MORE eggs, for a total of 9, the most recent one laid just yesterday. She lays one every three days. I candled the eggs today and none of them look great. Two of them were slightly cracked and clearly non-viable, so I replaced them with fakes, but Poe must have already known they were bad because they were the only 2 she stopped incubating. I'm giving the remaining 3 real eggs more time. But I'm very worried for Poe! Is there any way to discourage her from having even more? Taking eggs has only made her continue laying in the past. How can I keep her healthy with all this nutrient loss?

 

[Angelica]

Okay so I've searched this up on Google when my bird hatched a baby which was 11 days ago now but it says to just leave the normal eggs in with her until she gives up on them which could take up to a few months if you take them away to early she will continue to lay eggs.

 

[DonnaBudgie]

Okay so I've searched this up on Google when my bird hatched a baby which was 11 days ago now but it says to just leave the normal eggs in with her until she gives up on them which could take up to a few months if you take them away to early she will continue to lay eggs.

I think what you read only applies to whole clutches of infertile eggs. She won't lay more if you take out the unfertile or dead in shell eggs. She's too busy feeding the one baby she has! He's going to be a big healthy chick since he has no competition for food.
Post pictures of him every few days so we can see how he's growing up!

 

[Conurefamily]

Context: I have a female GCC, Poe, who was a chronic egg-layer. She has a mate, so it makes sense (we thought they were both boys when we got her). After struggling to discourage her laying, I decided last year to give her a nest box in case she decided to incubate, hoping raising chicks would prevent her from laying for a longer period of time. Well, it worked. She broke the first 3 eggs of the clutch (which I replaced with fakes), but incubated the last 3. The eldest of the 3 unfortunately failed to hatch, but the other two hatched perfectly fine and were raised by my conure couple for 2 months before I gave the chicks to people who know how to hand-tame them and find them homes. It's been roughly a year and half (the largest amount of time she's gone without laying) and I got lazy about simulating winter hours for my birdies, so my GCC decided to start laying again. I tried to do the same thing. She broke the first 4 this time and I replaced them as usual. She has since had FIVE MORE eggs, for a total of 9, the most recent one laid just yesterday. She lays one every three days. I candled the eggs today and none of them look great. Two of them were slightly cracked and clearly non-viable, so I replaced them with fakes, but Poe must have already known they were bad because they were the only 2 she stopped incubating. I'm giving the remaining 3 real eggs more time. But I'm very worried for Poe! Is there any way to discourage her from having even more? Taking eggs has only made her continue laying in the past. How can I keep her healthy with all this nutrient loss?

An avian vet can give her a shot to stop the over laying of eggs, in the mean time she needs protein, ours hate eggs but love thin cuts of medium cooked steak, still a bit red, and calcium. Good luck, I know they can be hard and heart breaking.

 

[hiriki]

I truly think that the nest box isn't the solution you intend it to be. If I were you, I would remove the box, wait for her to have a clutch, and replace with wooden eggs. If she's clever about identifying fake eggs, you can either warm them before the swap, or you can give her her own eggs back after submerging them in water or refrigerating for a little while to stop chick growth. It sounds like you were just removing the eggs, which absolutely triggers hens to lay more, you do need to give them something to "incubate" once they lay.

As a previous post mentioned, there's also hormone shots which can be administered by a vet to discourage laying. Personally, if you're not intending specifically to breed your pair and are well versed in problem solving for all of the various issues that can occur when raising chicks in case of her abandoning or not taking good care of her clutch, the risks are too high for chick death to simply let her get it out of her system... never mind the fact that shelters are full of birds who are already homeless and if you're not a reputable breeder it's probably best not to add to that population. That's not like a moral judgment statement, just kind of a neutral opinion, you're entitled to disagree certainly.