Mating

Coastal-Birds · Post by **Coastal-Birds** » Fri Sep 11, 2009 1:10 am

Hi all firstly.
Now i have a question about mating with ringnecks.
This year i have to swap some birds about as they dont seem to be interested in doing anything.My cobalt cock is with a dark green split blue and dont like each other so i am going to try other mates with them.
Now can someone tell me does a cock bird have to mate daily in between each leg laid to be fertile or as other sites say they can mate upto 4 weeks before the hen lays and eggs will be all fertile.
Any help would be great and very very urgent.
Thanks

Recio · Post by **Recio** » Fri Sep 11, 2009 1:18 am

Hi Coastal Birds;

Spermatozoids will cumulate in the upper part of the oviduct of the female between 3 and 4 weeks before laying. IRN do not need to mate during the laying period to obtain fertile eggs.

Beautifull birds: I guess a violet (female?), 2 pallidinos males without the ring and a creamino ?

Coastal-Birds · Post by **Coastal-Birds** » Fri Sep 11, 2009 1:31 am

Hi Recio
Yes you got the birds right.That is a comman avairy for young birds.That is a photo from last year and now they are all mated up and most are on eggs or with you.
So if i can get my cobalt to mate with a blue and violet hen and see them mate then say 3 weeks later they lay eggs they should be fertile.
Same with my dark green split blue hen all i have for her is a blue cock.
I wanted to mate the cobalt with the dark green to get more dark greens,cobalts and true olives(DF Dark greens)but they dont seem to like each other.
Here in Australia cobalts are hard to get still and dark greens even rarer and a true oliveDF is just about impossible to find.
Im planning on swapping them this weekend and hope to see them mate so at least some of my good birds will have young.
Thanks again for that information on mating ,has cleared that up as other also say they have to mate upto 3 days before eggs are laid or they will be all infetile.

Recio · Post by **Recio** » Fri Sep 11, 2009 1:46 am

Attention Coastal Birds!!
You can say that the fertil eggs one hen is laying come from spermatozoids from mating 3-4 weeks before, but you can not be sure that the fact that you see them mating means that you will have fertile eggs 3-4 weeks later. Not every mating leads to fecondation, but every fecondation comes from mating. I hope it is clear.
Cheers

Coastal-Birds · Post by **Coastal-Birds** » Fri Sep 11, 2009 1:58 am

Hi again
I plan on verifying matings when i do this so that each will have mated a few times just to make sure so i dont miss out.
I have done this already with some blue split whwt birds but plan on letting them mate some more.
but at least now you have cleared the mating process up for me.
Thankyou again.

Recio · Post by **Recio** » Fri Sep 11, 2009 2:12 am

Last year I tried to pair a blue cinamon male to 2 girls, one after the other, but after mating for 3 weeks with the first one, he did not like the other female (?). May be it just depends on the character of each bird and it will work for you.
Good luck

Coastal-Birds · Post by **Coastal-Birds** » Fri Sep 11, 2009 2:27 am

I have been told a 3yr or older hen will raise young by herself where as a 2yr old will rely on the cock to feed her to.I have never had to do this before so all new to me but i have to try something or some of my good birds will just sit there and be wasted.
And the cobalts alot want young as i said before they are rare here and cost alot to get even a young.I have at least 60 breeding pairs of ringnecks and then other parrots which make up about another 15 pairs or more lol.
Ive lost count of what there is.

Recio · Post by **Recio** » Fri Sep 11, 2009 2:50 am

Coastal-Birds wrote:I have been told a 3yr or older hen will raise young by herself where as a 2yr old will rely on the cock to feed her to.

Yes I heve also read it in this forum, but I do not know when.

Jay · Post by **Jay** » Sat Sep 12, 2009 9:21 am

I've read up on this awhile back and I recall one avian veterinarian wrote in an article that in parrots, male sperm has a lifespan of only up to 1 week. Another article I read from college students making experiments confirmed this. I'll try to dig up these articles.

Not sure how long IRNs sperm cells lasts or if anyone made specific studies on them.

Jay · Post by **Jay** » Sat Sep 12, 2009 9:29 am

Coastal-Birds wrote:I have been told a 3yr or older hen will raise young by herself where as a 2yr old will rely on the cock to feed her to.

I think it has nothing to do with age but rather experience. Presumably a 2 year old hen has never had the experience of feeding her babies so she is relying purely on instinct. An extra set of hands, ideally from a proven male sure helps. But I guess also because of instinct, hens will feed crying babies with or without a mate. My point though is you always have better chances when there is a mate especially for a new mother.

So far, I've had two older hens raise a clutch on their own and it is okay for a small clutch of say 2-3 babies. Four and above babies, the hen works hard to feed the babies especially when they start to get bigger and demand more food. In hindsight, I wouldn't give 4 chicks for a lone mother to fend for mainly because I feel sorry for her having to work twice as hard.

Recio · Post by **Recio** » Sun Sep 13, 2009 1:58 am

Hi,
I came to the conclusion of 3 weeks between mating and lying because I was doing a homework with my daugther about reproduction in hens, and it seems that hens need to cumulate spermatozoids in the upper part of their oviduct to fecond eggs because they lay everyday and thus spermatozoids would not be able to progress up while the new coming egg is going down. As there is a waiting time of at least 3 weeks in IRN between begining mating and lying, it looked correct to me the hen's theory but probably Jay is right since IRN do not lye eggs averyday and they do not have clutches of 10 chicks.

Coastal-Birds · Post by **Coastal-Birds** » Sun Sep 13, 2009 4:01 pm

This is a hard matter to work out.
Most say hens will lay only every second day but this i can prove wrong.
I have a hen which 4 days ago had no eggs and yesterday she has 3,so she has laid at least 2 eggs ,1 per day.
I normally never check daily when laying so i dont disturb them but with swapping some birds i have been checking every day.