One of my canaries laid an egg!

[getting there]

Which was a shock because I was told that they need all these special conditions to be met before they will lay.

I went in to give them fresh grit, water and food (apple, silverbeet, seed, soggy weetbix) and on the floor was a little blue-grey egg. No wonder they were eating so much lately and flying around so much. I put a breastpad, the feathers from their last molt (I was saving them for dd to use for art) and some dried grass in my small mortar and placed the egg in there in the bottom of the cage.

I'll check in a week or two to see if they're fertilised.

[baldowrie]

are they sitting?

In Spalding, Lincolnshire, a lot of people breed canaries with no particularly special equipment. Good Old Geoff Capes, the world former strongest man and a very gentle giant and gentleman whom I have meet him a number of times as his father lived next door to me, breeds (or did)them and has won many prizes.

[Eigon]

I used to help look after a friend's canaries. She would give them a lot of chickweed when they were sitting on eggs, so they would have an incentive to get off the nest now and then and forage for the seeds on the floor of the cage.

[getting there]

I'm not entirely sure if she's sitting. I'm out of the house much of the day when I check on them she's standing on the side of the nest or arranging the material. When she feeds the other one stands on the side of the nest. I've ordered a proper nesting pan for her because I don't think the mortar is the best - too deep and steep.