FINCHforum

I currenty have four society finches in a double flight cage. I have two males and two females. I am not interested in breeding them but when I visit the pet stores I just love seeing them all snuggled in the little bamboo nest. As it is, my females are laying eggs in their food dishes and I just throw them out each day.

When I had a m/f pair of zebras I had a nest in the cage and each day I would check it and replaced each egg with a dummy egg. The hen would layed five eggs and the birds would sit on them for almost two weeks and then would start tearing the nest apart. At this point I would take the nest out and clean it up and put it back into the cage and the cycle would begin again.

I'd like to know what is more stressful for the birds, having them lay eggs every day or every other day and have the eggs taken away or letting them sit on dummy eggs and giving the hens a break from laying eggs for a little while.

I would love to put a nest in the societies cage, right now they sleep on the perch and stack themselves up one on top of the other. In the nest box I wouldn't have to worry about the top bird falling off.

Lisa

They do NOT need a nest.
You don't have to worry about them falling off.
Amazingly they balance that stack very well.

I would not put a nest in the cage with M and F. The nest will trigger their urge to mate and lay eggs. It is the laying of the eggs that drain resources from the hens body. So you don't want her to be laying eggs if she isn't breeding.

That said, just putting M + F together is tempting mating and thus eggs. If you do NOT want them to breed, you may have to separate the M from the F in separate cages.

I have four societies too but i have 3 males and 1 female. The female likes sleeping in food dishes (they have a nest but they havent dared to sleep in it yet) but the males like to sleep very close to each other on a perch, sometimes stacked on each other xD it looks so funny!

If you want to have nests for them to sleep in - maybe you can leave the nest but remove the nesting material ? I find that giving nesting material encourages them to breed :/ I only have some soft pieces of fabric in my nests and i have no egg yet

ac12 wrote:I would not put a nest in the cage with M and F. The nest will trigger their urge to mate and lay eggs. It is the laying of the eggs that drain resources from the hens body. So you don't want her to be laying eggs if she isn't breeding.

That said, just putting M + F together is tempting mating and thus eggs. If you do NOT want them to breed, you may have to separate the M from the F in separate cages.

Thanks Gary, I guess I won't worry so much about them sitting on top of each other. I don't want to seperate them, the reason I bought the double flight cage was so that I could provide a long flight area and plenty of space. And since the production of eggs is what depletes the hen that is why I thought the approach I took with the zebras was better for the hen. She'd lay her five eggs then had about two weeks of not producing eggs until she tore the nest apart and the cycle began again.

I hope my newest pair of birds turn out to be same sex so this is not something I have to worry about.