Should I throw out zebra finch eggs? I have 2 females

[soaring-yonder]

One of my finches is laying eggs, and I don't know whether to leave them or take them away. There's cuttlefish in the cage, which I see them both use a lot, so it shouldn't make her ill. Both of them are girls, so theres no chance of it being fertilised.

[lovezebs]

soaring-yonder

If they have a nest, take it out.
Nests tend to get them into a nesting mode, which means laying eggs (with or without males being present).

Eggs are safe to remove, as long as they have enough calcium in their diet (cuttle bone, crushed egg shells, oyster shell grit, etc.).

If they persist in laying too many eggs, you could try cutting back on day light hours , by following the natural day hours, by covering the cage with a lightweight dark sheet.

Another solution, is to let them sit on fake eggs (can be ordered on line). That way, it gives them a bit of a break from the constant laying for a couple of weeks at least.

[Sally]

You've gotten good advice already. Usually, the hens will stop laying eggs so often. Though it is good to offer egg food to birds, it can stimulate hens to lay eggs. Better to offer them a variety of veggies, so they can have a healthy diet without the additional protein.

[Sojourner]

I don't know about zebras - but my societies are driven far more by light cycles than anything else. I can feed them pretty much anything I want, as long as their cage is dark when it gets dark outside.

For about a year, simply covering them with a sheet worked well. Then my hen started laying again and it took me awhile to figure out how to get her to stop. This time, temperature seemed to be an issue as the room they were being kept in would get warm enough that my son felt it necessary to run a fan in there even in the middle of winter (badly balanced furnace in a rental).

I partially closed the vent in there and she stopped laying.

Now they are back with me and I keep it cooler here - because I am on a fixed income and don't heat past 68F, and keep it at 60F to 64F at night. So there will be no issue with out-of-whack temperatures here. No sign of egg-laying for quite some time now.

The picture I use here is of my first pair of birds. They were both females it turns out, as the white one is now my egg-layer, LOL!

However, for whatever reason, the little brown bird decided to become an egg machine. And at the time I was allowing them to stuff themselves with all the spinach they could eat - and spinach is one of several veggies that can bind calcium. I do not know for a fact but strongly suspect that this was part of the issue.

On her second attempt to lay a clutch of eggs, even though I had removed anything even vaguely nestlike and even though it turns out both birds were female, she got eggbound and was gone in less than an hour from the time I noticed she was in distress.

So I fully get your predicament, with 2 birds that are both females but one of them insists on laying anyway. I'm not sure how much breeding behaviour even enters into it when both birds are female and there is no male present.

But try keeping them covered and quiet when it gets dark outside, and make sure the temp in that room isn't too warm, and see where things go from there.

[Sojourner]

Tried to add this to the post above but it seems that by the time I got done typing it and dealing with a Puppy Emergency, the clock had expired on the edit function.

So just let me add:

In fact, my societies seem to be driven far more by light and temperature than anything I've read about their breeding behaviour would seem to indicate. I routinely feed them egg food, sunflower seeds, nyjer, and a wide variety of other high protein or oily seeds (hemp is a particular favorite) and the feed has never been an issue either time they've gone into breeding mode. However I always change the feed just to be on the safe side if they go into laying mode until I can find the actual cause of the behaviour. At least that issue has been eliminated, making it easier to find what IS causing it.