Our Parrot Ella Lays an Egg
- Karrie Zylstra Myton
- 3 days ago
- 4 min read
The other day my teenage son burst into my home office while I was in the middle of a Zoom video conference with people from across the country.
"Mom!! Ella laid an egg!!"
I couldn't blame him for being excited. Ella has lived in our family for over 20 years and this had never happened before.
In 2004, my husband and I decided to adopt a parrot. We talked to my aunt the veterinarian and connected with a place on Mercer Island called Denise's Parrot Place. We went frequently to the shop, carefully looking at the young birds there who were, of course, raised in the U.S. After much consideration, we picked Ella the bare-eyed cockatoo.
It is no small thing to welcome a bird into your home. Many people would struggle with the noise and the approximately 60-year commitment. We did a LOT of research into what to feed her and how to best care for her, got the most palatial cage we could afford, and learned to hardly hear her background noise.
She hollers a lot, welcoming us when we come home and sometimes waking us when we are sleeping. She has amazing hearing and will tell the dog when our cars are coming down the road so that he can rush to the door, bark, and greet us.
She has a limited vocabulary and mostly says, "Hi, Ella" or "Goodnight, Ella."
I learned during the pandemic that I cannot have her in the room with me while I am in a video conference. She'll try to participate in the conversation by calling out to the people talking, causing people to wonder what the heck is happening.
We've had Ella for over 20 years now and she has outlived many of our mammals. This month she'll turn 22. About 10 years ago, she began plucking her feathers. At first our vet said she was probably stressed by the three kittens we had adopted in a foster "fail." (This happens when well-meaning people like us attempt to foster a litter with the intention of sending them back to the shelter to get adopted but cannot send them back and keep them—a foster fail.)
We kept thinking we'd find ways to make her feel at ease and that she'd get used to the cats. At first she was just fluffing her feathers and it didn't seem worth the option of giving her an antidepressant that the veterinarian offered.
Then our vet moved to a new clinic and stopped taking birds as patients. After that, the pandemic happened and then I could not find an avian vet.
Finally, I ran into someone with a bird at a bubble tea shop, of all places. She recommended a veterinarian fairly close to us. By this spring in 2026, Ella really seemed agitated and the plucking was getting slowly but steadily worse.
On the Monday of his spring break, my son and I brought Ella into the veterinarian, who gave her an exam and ran some tests.
It was reassuring to know that the food we fed her was not a part of the problem. Denise's Parrot Place had helped us set that part up well: lots of vegetables, a cooked bean mix, and quality pellets.
The doctor said Ella was probably agitated by hormonal fluctuations and might benefit from a birth control shot called Lupron. She also recommended that we keep her night coverings on for more hours after learning that Ella was staying up late with my son and then getting up early with me.
I am a woman who has lived through adolescence and pregnancy, and I am now living through peri-menopause. I know something about hormonal fluctuations and how they affect your body and mind. I immediately agreed to treat Ella to see if we could help her feel better.
After that, we bundled Ella back into her carrier and brought her back home to see how the change in light and the shot would work.
Four days later, she laid an egg and my son was announcing this in the middle of my meeting.
"I am today-years-old when I learned that parrots lay eggs!" said one of the people on Zoom with me.
"Parrots lay eggs?!?" This is what most people exclaim when I tell them the story.
Yes. Parrots are birds and they lay eggs.
If you want more detail about bird reproduction check out this site:
Do the females need a male to lay an egg?
No, they generate eggs without needing to have them fertilized by a male. Females can do this even if the eggs are not fertilized by males just like chickens do. If you think about it, human females do something similar every time they ovulate.
For more on parrot reproduction and egg-laying females:
When I called the vet in a half-panic about Ella's egg, the doctor said the egg had developed well before we gave Ella the shot and not to worry about it too much. We just needed to remove it from the cage to keep her from trying to nest with it.
Since then, Ella has been much calmer and I do think that allowing her more time to rest in the quiet dark has helped along with that shot.
Like I said. It's no small thing to bring a parrot into your home. They are remarkably different from mammals and this can really be a challenge. But you do learn a lot about the natural world and you sure have something to talk about!
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