Bad Zebra Behavior

[BBry]

Hello everybody. So recently my 2 zebra finch pairs have been acting naughty. For some reason they have started to "dig" in their food bowls, causing seeds to fly everywhere and half of their food ends up being tossed outside for the wild birds. They usually like to sit in the bowl and eat like that but they would never toss the food it's just something new that started about a week ago. Any idea what might be causing this behavior?

[lovezebs]

BBry
Hi.
Could they be trying to dig nests in the food bowls?

~Elana~

[BBry]

We do find eggs in their food bowl often.

[David]

BBry,

Hmmm, since you found the eggs often in their food bowl, maybe because they want to build nest in the food bowl lol. Did you provide them nest in the cage? If not then they just want to start build a nest in dish or bowl. The female laid eggs in the food bowl when they both not eating there, if you don't want to breed them, one of the things you can do is try to change different shape or size of the food bowl. What size or what kind of food bowl you're using? Especially smaller bowl better than bigger size, so it won't fit them in to laid eggs or build a nest -like in it hope this helps. Let us know if you have more questions.

David

[MiaCarter]

I saw your thread title and thought to myself, "So she's got normal zebras?" LOL

That's a rather curious behavior.
To be honest, I *wish* my guys did this. They don't toss the seed hulls, so they build up. The zebras have a tendency of pretending they're out of food once the seed hulls reach a depth of 1/3 of an inch or so. So I usually scoop out the bowls mid-day.

Could your guys be doing the same? Could the seeds actually be hulls that they're pushing aside to get to the seed below?

I agree with the others that the behavior sounds a bit nest-ey.

[BBry]

No it's uneaten food they are tossing. Every day my mom sweeps the floor and it's just a pile of perfectly good seeds. We just switched their bowls to smaller ones so they can't get inside them. Let's see if that works

[BBry]

Well it looks like the small cups worked! There's a lot less seeds on the floor now compared to before. They still lay eggs sometimes but they end up on the cage floor now. Thanks so much for your help guys!