SidneyDR
Sidney - not your fault if the little buggers laid eggs and then didn't bother to sit them. However in future it might be best to remove anything nest-like - this probably won't stop all egg laying but it ought to cut it way way down.
If your hen gets into a cycle where nothing you do seems to put an end to the egg laying, you can remove the eggs as they are laid to be replaced by a fake egg. Then they will sit the fake eggs for a few weeks until they eventually abandon the nest.
Just be sure you already have the fake eggs on hand before you put the nest in! GlamGouldians has some and they're pretty cheap but you do have to spend $30 minimum on an order there.
Canary fake eggs won't do, they are too large. I saw a place - Finch Connection I think it was - where they offered the same fake eggs for both finches and canaries. That isn't going to work for one or the other, LOL! Or maybe both if they're some odd in-between size.
lovezebs
As for the mysteriously disappearing nesting materials - I am still not sure what happened there, except that maybe there was less nesting material in the nest than I thought. There was some in the cage and some of it slipped under the liner on the cage bottom, but it didn't SEEM like enough to cover what was already in the cage because I'd put it there for them to make up the nest, and what I had poked into the nest myself.
At this point I'm almost positive my guys are sitting on duds. I'm pretty sure its been at least 3 weeks since I put the D-cup back in the cage for them to use as a nest, intending to get some fake eggs (which didn't happen, see why I say to make sure you have them on hand? LOL!) Maybe even 4. Its hard for me to tell how long its been since I've been in one of my drifty spells where time has no meaning for me. Which is how they ended up sitting their eggs while time passed me by and I DIDN'T get the fake eggs. But I'm pretty sure its been long enough by now that they should have already hatched.
I'm hoping this batch are dud eggs, they'd almost have to be I'm pretty sure. Which, of course, doubtless means I'll be hearing little peeping noises any day now, just to upset the apple cart. But I can tell my guys are not as happy as they could be. They're anxious when they're in the nest and they're not much less anxious when they're out of the nest. One is sitting at all times and this has been going on for weeks now. Neither one is touching the egg food any more though otherwise their appetites seem normal, but they are so quiet now. Bambi gave me a few half-hearted warbles yesterday but Pyewacket doesn't peep at all any more. Of course some of that behavior is doubtless a survival tactic to not draw attention to the nest, but still.
The whole breeding process is both physically and emotionally stressful for your birds. First there's the actual egg laying, which is hard on your hen to start with. Then there's all that sitting of the nest by everybody in the cage. And then there's the stress of feeding and raising any surviving chicks.
And THEN you have to cage the offspring separately from their parents and (preferably) also from each other, or sell or give them away, or at the very least separate all the males from the females, to prevent indiscriminate inbreeding, which will result in more unwanted eggs, nestlings, deaths in the egg and rejected chicks and chicks that don't survive because of the inbreeding. Or (which can be even worse) they survive for at least a time in a crippled state.
Breeding is fine if you INTEND to breed for a purpose and already have a method of rehoming the offspring and keeping related pairs from producing offspring. But not so great when things barrel along by accident. This is the SECOND time I've had a nesting situation that I really didn't want. I hope to high heaven it is the last. But at least Pye has stopped laying more eggs for the time being. Which is evidence to me that there is wisdom in keeping fake eggs on hand.
If only I were as wise beforehand as I am in hindsight, LOL!
