# What would cause a tiel egg to be really tiny?



## atvchick95 (Sep 17, 2007)

Jack and Jill are on eggs again, their 1st baby is around 2 months old 

when my boyfriend went to check the nest box the night before last there was a very tiny egg (it can ONLY be theirs no other birds can get in their cage or nest box)

it was smaller then a cockatiel egg, Smaller then a Budgie egg, and the smallest egg i've ever seen from a bird period (rather its a companion bird or wild) 

I didn't think to get a picture of it, before and now i can't because it got broken 

but i went on line trying to find a picture of a small egg to show you how small I meant and sadly NOT a single bird i could find laid a egg as small as it was

I was trying to think of all the Small birds (figuring small bird = small egg) so i looked up humming birds - found one that is the smallest humming bird who lays the smallest eggs (a bee humming bird) BUT that egg in the picture Was BIGGER then the egg found in Jack and Jills nest box 

I've never had this problem before, I don't want to have it any more 

So I'm hoping with out a picture of the actual egg Some one could explain why it happened 

they get high quality food , Veggies daily , bird bread several times a week (mine has veggies, whole wheat noodles(cooked), 15 different beans (cooked), eggs (shell and all) none of my breeding birds get spinach

they get Sunlight 

I just don't understand how they had such a tiny egg


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## sweetrsue (Jul 8, 2008)

I've never seen that either nor heard of it before! Some of my birds lay smaller eggs than others but nothing close to what you described. I used to breed budgies too and can't imagine a Cockatiel laying an egg smaller than that.


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## sweetrsue (Jul 8, 2008)

http://www.blurtit.com/q286268.html I tried to research this question and all I found was this. I don't think she got a satisfactory answer either.


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## tielfan (Aug 31, 2008)

A long time ago I had a single tiel hen who laid a clutch of infertile eggs. One of the eggs was about half the size of the others, and turned out not to have a yolk (all the others did). So my best guess is that it's just a defective egg. Since your birds have a great diet, maybe it's just one of those things that happens sometimes.


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## xxxSpikexxx (Jul 30, 2007)

That is strange  They sound like they eat really well. Do they have a cuttle bone aswell?


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## atvchick95 (Sep 17, 2007)

sweetrsue said:


> http://www.blurtit.com/q286268.html I tried to research this question and all I found was this. I don't think she got a satisfactory answer either.



thanks for the link, this pair is "dainty" compared to my others, but all their other eggs have been normal size 



tielfan said:


> A long time ago I had a single tiel hen who laid a clutch of infertile eggs. One of the eggs was about half the size of the others, and turned out not to have a yolk (all the others did). So my best guess is that it's just a defective egg. Since your birds have a great diet, maybe it's just one of those things that happens sometimes.


I hope thats all it is 



xxxSpikexxx said:


> That is strange  They sound like they eat really well. Do they have a cuttle bone aswell?


yes they do , I use 2 in one bones, cuttle bone on the inside mineral block on the outside, and they do use it  


just caught me off guard, but the other 2 eggs they laid before the tiny one are normal sized. If any other tiny ones show up I'll get a picture of it

I hope it was just a freak thing and it doesn't happen any more 

I was sad enough when none of their other eggs hatched Except for the one and they all had babies but one 

But i think i'm starting to see why the guy got rid of them - He said they wouldn't breed for him but did for the other owner and that's all he knew 

I've had NO trouble with them breeding it's just having the babies survive to come out of the egg 

oh and they're both over 18 months old - can't remember if i ever said that or not I can't remember the exact age I'd have to look at their bands again But I want to think either both were born in 05, or one was 05 and one was 04


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## tielfan (Aug 31, 2008)

> the other 2 eggs they laid before the tiny one are normal sized.


Spike laid normal-sized eggs both before and after the abnormal one. So in her case it was apparently just a fluke. This is a wild guess here, but my suspicion is that she initially formed a less-than-normal amount of material to go inside the egg, and her body automatically formed a shell that was just the right size to go around the material that was there.


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## atvchick95 (Sep 17, 2007)

tielfan said:


> Spike laid normal-sized eggs both before and after the abnormal one. So in her case it was apparently just a fluke. This is a wild guess here, but my suspicion is that she initially formed a less-than-normal amount of material to go inside the egg, and her body automatically formed a shell that was just the right size to go around the material that was there.



well that does make sense 

So far no more eggs other than the 2 they already had. 

So here's hoping it was just a fluke and no more will come about 


but now i have a whole different issue with a whole different pair that i'll post about (again i think lol) later because my break is up and I got to get back to cleaning cages, So i can get them stored before i wait to long and i'm lugging em out through the back yard to the shed in snow up to my knees


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## Sophia (Aug 11, 2007)

It has got to be a fluke, or all of the others would have been like the small one, or even another one like it!  Good Luck!


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## Bea (Jul 26, 2007)

Once i had a young female budgie in the aviary lay a ridiculously tiny egg, i put it down to her age as she was only about 4 months old and shouldn't have been laying. Obviously age isn't the problem here so i'm not sure what might have caused it. :huh:


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