Artificial Eggs! Eggzactly what you need! We carry a variety of artificial eggs. Often times new bird enthusiasts are baffled by the need to sell fake eggs. What are they for? Aren’t real eggs good enough? These fake eggs are used for a variety of reasons, but the most common use is to increase the survival rate of newly hatched chicks. Hens generally lay one egg every day or two during her laying cycle. The eggs all incubate for the same period of time, so the chicks hatch a day or two apart. Chicks at this age grow at an incredible rate, sometimes almost doubling their weight in a day. This means that the first chick to hatch is much larger and subsequently stronger than its clutch-mates. At feeding time the older chicks push the younger ones aside. The youngest chicks often don’t survive. The most extreme example in the wild is the Blue-Footed Booby who lays only two eggs in a clutch. The first one to hatch pushes its sibling out of the nest where it is left to die. Generations ago canary breeders discovered that removing the freshly laid eggs and replacing them with a substitute greatly increased survival rates. The real eggs are stored in a dry stable place until the hen is done laying (usually four eggs.) The fake ones are then removed and the real ones put back into the nest. This means that the chicks all hatch on the same day so none of them has a size advantage over the others. Of course this means more work for the hen, but in a captive breeding situation where food is readily available, this isn’t an issue. Some parrot species are notorious egg-eaters. Replacing a freshly laid egg with a ceramic egg that the parrot can’t eat sometimes helps to change this aberrant behavior. They can also be useful in helping an overly active egg laying hen through her breeding cycle. A broody hen that is given an artificial egg that can’t possibly hatch may stop laying eggs once she fails to hatch the egg.