# substituting eggs for wooden eggs



## Garye (Feb 20, 2005)

I know this is a dumb question, but I don't have a pigeon of my own. How do you guys manage to substitute wooden eggs for real eggs when the pigeon is on them? Don't they give you all a hard time by pecking at you when you try to reach for their eggs? I would imagine they'd fight to the death to protect their babies. Also it amazes me how they can just sit on wooden eggs like it's their own and not realize they're wooden eggs! 

Just curious.


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## ZigZagMarquis (Aug 31, 2004)

Its really not that big a deal. Just "palm" the wooden egg and reach under the bird, keeping your hand between the birg and the egg/wooden egg... release the wooden egg and pick-up the real one. Kinda use the same technique as if you were going to pick-up a real egg after about a week or so after it was laid to candle it to see if it was fertile. Don't be real fast or really slow, just be deliberate about it.

As for them knowing fake eggs from real eggs. All my birds are pretty much oblivious when I replace their real eggs with wooden ones... except of one hen, sometimes I think she knows, but sometimes I think she doesn't, its just that sometimes she'll not sit the fake ones for the full 19 to 20 days before she abandonms them.


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## Skyeking (Jan 17, 2003)

Garye said:


> How do you guys manage to substitute wooden eggs for real eggs when the pigeon is on them? Don't they give you all a hard time by pecking at you when you try to reach for their eggs? I would imagine they'd fight to the death to protect their babies. Also it amazes me how they can just sit on wooden eggs like it's their own and not realize they're wooden eggs!
> Just curious.


It's funny but it is quite easy. It is a daily job during breeding season, you pretty much know the schedule of who is going to lay, and you reach right under and check quickly, and if there is an egg I just switch them out real quick before they realize it. I can tell by looking at them and the position they are in if they even have an egg or not so I disturb them as little as possible. You don't want to leave an egg and allow it to incubate for any length of time so you have to stay on top of it.. 

Some pigeons give me a wing slap and try to pull the skin off my finger when they peck. But they are content once I leave them alone and back to the business of brooding. Some birds are used to me now, others never do. I have a few that know the difference between the real egg and the dummy egg and will lose interest in the dummy immediately.


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