FINCHforum

I put a Timothy hay ball in my male Zebra cage, thinking they might put it in their sleeping nest.

But I haven't seen any activity of them doing that. Do they need the hay or am I just making a mess by putting it in there?

Thanks...

I don't think they *need* the hay, but mine certainly enjoy it.
They seem to enjoy carrying it around more than using it for nesting.

But my guys never got the hang of the little ball dispenser.
I give them hay via a little tupperware tub. I put hay in there and sprinkle millet seed over it and they like to "forage".

They seem to like to hold and collect the hay in their beaks, but they didn't really use a whole lot of it for their nests. They preferred the bits of paper towel for their nests.
In other words, they seem to play with it more than using it for a functional nest building purpose.

Thanks, I'm going to try that. What do you with the paper towels?

Do you clean out the nest from time to time?

With the paper towels, I'll rip them up into small shreds and put them in a tupperware on the bottom of the cage (otherwise, the wind from their wings pushes them into the corners of the cage) and they'll use that to build their nests.
I'll remove anything that's not used up after about 12 hours and replace with new stuff. And then repeat until they're done making their nests.

The bamboo nests get really nasty within a few weeks and there's no way to disinfect, so periodically, I'll replace the nests entirely and let them start over.

Once they have eggs and/or babies, though, you generally don't want to disturb the nests unless absolutely necessary as you risk them abandoning it. (I had to pull out a bit of nesting out about a week ago because the chick who kept squiggling out.)

They seem much less picky when they're just using it for sleeping and don't have eggs.