FINCHforum

I'm hoping that someone will have some advice/suggestions on what to do. I have a male and female zebra finch. I purchased them from petco at the end of January, so i don't know how old they are. About a month ago she laid an egg. We took out the eggs because we did not want any babies. We decided to go ahead and let her have two eggs. I put a nesting box and material in the cage. The male built the nest in the grit dish and she did lay eggs. She laid 6 eggs, (starting on 3/24) so we switched four of them with fake ones. She sat on the eggs and even the male sat on them. I removed all of the extra nesting material. Everything seemed to be going well. The male started messing with the nest. He had turned the nest upside down in the dish twice and we did put it back. The other day when I came home from work, the nest was completely destroyed. One of the eggs fell through the bottom of the cage and broke. I put the nest in the nesting box and she hasn't sat on the 1 real or 4 fake ones. After three days of her not touching it, we took out the nest completely and gave them new nesting material. I did speak to someone when they were having trouble with building the nest. He would build one then take it apart and rebuild. I was told that they sounded inexperienced. Any suggestions on what to do as far as the inexperience. They have a cutttlebone in their cage and I got them dishes that hook through the bars so that they can't put the nest in the food dish. I don't understand why after a week he would destroy the nest. Does anyone have any clues? Thank you in advance.

klauc66, first of all welcome to the forum. I Hope you will learn as much as I have.

It is not uncommon for zebras to lay eggs in a food/grit dish, but changing to a food hopper was a good move from your part to prevent this in the future.

Zebras are very intense nest builders, yours seem to be inexperienced but then again a bird will tare up its own nest if it is not satisfied with it or if the hen is not happy.

Moving the nest into the nestbox was a good idea but one that will work only in very rare circumstances. They settled into their "nest" and when it was moved they had no clue where to go and incubate and abandoned the whole idea.

As far as the inexperience of your birds, if that is the problem, only time and failed attempts will help the birds to learn, noting you can do can help this process

The best thing will be to let them start over in the new nestbox you provided

Welcome to the forum Kaluc66. It sounds like you already got some good advice. I hope your Zebras do better after a few tries.