First, I want to say hello, as I am a newbie. So excited to have found this site and forum!

I have a cockatiel pair who have decided to become parents. I'm very happy about it, but Rosey started laying an egg every 2 days, but is now laying an egg everyday.....#9 arrived today! I didn't think that cockatiels would lay this many eggs, and I am concerned about her calcium level decreasing. She eats NuPreen Natural pellets, has a mineral block, and a cuttlebone. So far, all is still well.

I decided to candle some of the eggs tonight and ONE of the eggs is developing already. There are blood vessels visible and it looks like maybe day 6? None of the oth re are showing signs of developenet yet. I think she's sitting on the, while she is still laying. It looks like I may have one hatch a week before the others...if any I'd them are fertile.

Is this going to be a problem? This is my first clutch and Ive been reading and researching, but I'm not sure what's going on here. Thanks in advance for any hel:)

Welcome to the group! I was going to ask if it was possible that you had two females instead of a true pair, but if one of the eggs is developing it's obvious that a male is present. Do you have any other hens who might be laying eggs in this nest? It's not normal for cockatiels to lay eggs every day. It happens occasionally, but I've never heard of a hen that was able to keep on doing it.

It takes several days to get visible signs of development. Day 5 is when it's usually recommended to start candling eggs, because that's the point where you definitely should be able to see something. It might be possible to see something prior to that but it's not guaranteed.

Thanks for the response, Carolyn. I might go ahead and warn that I am the typo queen, so sry about all the typos in my first post. Lol.
So far today, no new egg, but it's still early. For her health, I don't want this to continue.

I definitely have a male and female together. I candled the one egg again last night, and I can actually see te embryo moving around inside the egg. It was so awesome! I purchased the items to make a brooder yesterday and plan to get it up and running today to make sure the temperature is right, etc before the babes hatch. If she has one hatch way early and the others show any signs of viability, should I leave the early hatchling in the nestbox or pull it? I don't want her to abandon the oth eggs if they are way behind in development, believing they are not fertile.

I appreciate your welcoming me and any help you can offer. I just want to make sure I do everything I can ...and do it right.

In the wild, one female cockatiel can lay up to 10 eggs, though in captivity, the limit is usually 8. So I would think they could be capable of laying a 9th, and be perfectly fine.

Upon seeing your r introductory post, is it possible that the untamed tiel can actually be a female? That would explain why Rosey was unseccessful at breeding with him, and fell in love with Lucky, instead.

When it comes to breeding, you definitely want to talk to Carolyn. I too have some experience, due to my mother raising them while I was a child (I learned a lot from her), so I'll try to offer any information that can be useful.

Usually, it's best to leave them in for the first few days for the parents to care, but you can handle them though. There are 3 ways to raise chicks. One is called hand rearing, where you take them out, and feed and handle them yourself, which is what my mom did. The second known as parent raising, where as the name implies, let the parents take care of everything, though you won't have very well socialized chicks afterwards. The third option is to co-parent raise, where you let the parents do most of the feeding, but take them out and handle them, as well as occasionally feed them yourself, which is what Carolyn does.

Eggs never hatch all at the same time, so you can can count on one hatching earlier than he rest. They'll still incubate the rest of the eggs, even after one hatches.

My mom would take them out after a certain number of days, just before their eyes open. I'll have to ask her, since I don't remember the exact number (though internet suggests they open their eyes at 10 days), though it's more important if you're specifically looking to hand rear.

I hope my information has been helpful. I'll try and answer any other questions about raising them, to the best of my ability.

Thanks, Jessi. I'm so excited and am still hopeful that one or two eggs will begin to show signs of fertility. Lucky is very young (close to a year old), so I wasn't expecting them to breed this soon. I just uploaded a video to the breeding board to get help determining how old the embryo in my candled egg is. I think that's important to learn when breeding.

Feeding new hatchlings is difficult and risky because it's easy to aspirate (choke/drown) them. So leave the babies with the parents as long as you can. If it gets to the point that it's difficult for the parents to take care of all the chicks, you can pull the oldest babies then and let the parents take care of the tiny ones. Or you can start co-parenting the oldest ones at that point to help take some of the workload off the parents.

Thank you for the insight. I don't want to do anything to harm the little ones.

yes too many babies can be a problem. I had a baby #6 hatched several days later than older siblings. He didn't make it -- they were all cuddled up on top of him, he had no much chance to be fed.
Later, you can probably keep a track of how many eggs are fertile, and maybe remove/replace with fake some of them if there are too many. Of course, it's a moral question of killing...Just a thought...

Is your hen older than Lucky?

I am not certain of the age of the hen. That's one reason I am so nervous. The pet store owner who rescued her and my grey male said that the elderly lady who had the couldn't take care of them anymore. He said they were about a year old and he was trying to make them a breeding pair. I believe the female is probably closer to 2 years old, but the grey appears to be younger than her. He is possibly a year old.

Lucky is close to a year old, so yes, she is older than him.