FINCHforum

Hi can you please advise me what to do I have two 6 month old female baby zebra finches. unfortunately mum and dad died . but they keep laying eggs not sure what to do! do i remove the eggs as i have been told they wont hatch, leave them and let her sit on them or remove them and replace them with fake eggs. dont want to upset them by doing the wrong thing.

Do you have a nest in the cage? If so, that stimulates them to lay eggs, even when there isn't a male present. If there is no nest, sometimes they will try to lay eggs in seed cups or even on the floor.

What you can do if you want to keep a nest in the cage is let them lay some eggs and they probably will start sitting on them once they have laid a full clutch. That will stop the egg laying for some time, as they think they are incubating fertile eggs. What you are trying to do is slow down the daily production of eggs, as if that continues, it can deplete their bodies of calcium, and that is never desirable. Since you have two hens, they can 'play house' without any danger of ever producing any babies.

jacannah

Hello
From your post, I am assuming that there are more than one female, and that these females are all laying eggs (?).

Are there any males in the cage/flight?
If there are males, I would remove them to another cage.

That said, your girls might still lay eggs, whether there are males around or not.

Zebras, can start reproducing at a very early age, so six months is not unheared of.

If there are nests in the cage, I would remove them, along with any nesting material, that could be used to construct a new nest.
This may stop the egg laying, although some determined girls will start laying eggs in seed cups, or even on the floor of the cage.

Your other alternative, is to leve the eggs where they are, and let them sit on them. This at least will give their bodies a break from the constant laying (as in, the more eggs you remove, the more eggs they will lay).

Another important thing, is to make sure that they have enough calcium in their diet, to compensate for the loss through egg making.

Something else you can try, is to shorten the light exposure to less hours a day, by covering their cage, tricking them into thinking that it's not breeding season.

I would also add a swing, and some items that may capture their interest, and perhaps take their little minds of 'just' laying eggs.

Goodluck.

~Elana~