| THE BREEDING SEASON African Grey’s do not have a specific breeding season; they can and will lay at any time of year.It is possible to manipulate them to lay when the weather is | |||||
| more favourable for the survival of chicks and less strenuous for the parents i.e. when it is mild and dry in the late spring and early summer. So how do we achieve this. Most birds have a breeding season which is directly linked to food availability for the young birds. In the wild African Greys have their food source available all the year round due to the climate in the natural habitat, hence no breeding season. If however there is not sufficient food they will not waste their time on egg laying just to see the chicks die and unduly exhaust the hen bird. We therefore need to stimulate a seasonal response from the birds by manipulating the way you feed. But what to feed? Obviously we use our own products and out initial range consisted of those products we have tried and tested. We feed a combination of different food items. Premium Parrot “Ideal” or “Banquet” is the seed of mix of choice. Either is suitable but our breeding pair get a mixture of both. Fruit and vegetables are offered daily (see fruit and vegetables article) onto which Psittamix Vitamin and Mineral Powder has been sprinkled. Eggfood containing berries and freshwater shrimp And our exclusive magic ingredient Parrot Palm Fruit Extract Let’s create that season shall we? November, December, January and February are generally cold wet months when raising chicks can be hard work. During these months we feed seed and fruit on a daily basis. Eggfood with Parrot Palm Fruit Extract mixed into it twice each week. This mixture provides the birds with a good all round intake which allows them to recover from breeding and to survive our inhospitable winter. Once into March increase the Eggfood to daily and increase the amount of Parrot Palm Fruit Extract to double the recommended rate. The Parrot Palm Fruit Extract is the key here. As it made from West African Palm Nuts which are one of the African Greys main food sources fooling them into thinking a bumper crop is on the way will stimulate them into egg laying. Everything should be replaced with fresh on a daily basis; you will soon be able to gauge how much your birds are eating by what has been left at the end of each day. This routine should (stress should) see eggs at the end of April.  ON EGGS Its now late spring and hopefully you have 3 large white eggs in the nest box. African Greys take about a month to hatch so leave them alone. If you keep looking in the box all you will succeed in doing is driving the hen out, the eggs go cold and the unborn chicks die. Feed them and leave them. Only experienced keepers who have the correct equipment should attempt to hand rear from the egg and it is preferable on many counts to leave them with mum for the best part of three weeks before hand rearing anyway. Your best course of action however had is to forget about the next box for about seven weeks after the first egg has been laid. When you do go to check there should be eighteen to twenty day old young in there which are strong enough to be brought in for hand rearing. By leaving the chicks with the parents this long achieves two main things, it passes on all the important gut bacteria and sorts out any weak chicks in the clutch. It may sound cruel but you reduce the viability of a species by rearing every potential runt from every clutch. 
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