Mid-Atlantic Gardening: Mid-Atlantic Bird Watching - Winter 2012-2013, 1 by JBerger

JBerger wrote:
Gita Honey, a hutch is what you keep rabbits in. A clutch is when birds lay eggs and hatch them. Some double clutch , in fact I am not sure but I do believe most of our wild/backyard birds double clutch. I used to hate that when I had exotics that double clutched. We try and get just one clutch because of hand feeding them all. A bird has just so many eggs in her to lay in her lifetime. Same with chickens. The hens I had (parrots) still lay eggs even without a mate. Of course they are not fertile but they still want to sit them and cluck over them like a chicken. I had one just the other day. I allow her to sit her egg for a few days then I take it from her. Sometimes they will sit and not eat and if the egg is not fertile, that is not good for them. One time I had two little parrotlets that both double clutched on me and I was hand feeding 12 of those little guys from early on until they were weaned. I called them the dirty dozen.

To be sure I fed them all I would keep them in a basket and as I fed them move them to the other basket until all 12 were fed. This goes on every two or three hours round the clock.
The little tiny one in the center was named Rover.