Your Questions About Breeding Finches

admin answers:

My zebra finches bred constantly. It depends on the finches, of course, but as the previous poster said, it’s hard to keep them from doing it. Also, once the female is in the habit of laying eggs, she’ll keep doing it, just like a hen, even if the male has been separated from her. If this happens, take the eggs away, because otherwise the female will kill herself trying to sit on and take care of all the eggs.

Get a small, covered nest from a pet store for your finches and give them timothy hay to line the nest with. The male will do this constantly. Then the female will lay the eggs, and the pair will take turns sitting on them, or sit on them together if there are too many eggs. My female laid infertile eggs the first time (you can tell if they are fertile by holding them up to a strong lamp about two weeks after they’re laid — if you can’t see anything solid in them, they’re infertile), but the second time, she laid seven eggs. Seven chicks hatched after about 4-5 weeks, and four survived to leave the nest. That’s about normal. Both parents fed them the whole time, even after they left the nest. The chicks make a totally obnoxious noise when they want to be fed, which is pretty much all the time. I love birds totally, but it even got on my nerves after a while, so don’t keep them in your bedroom! A couple of chicks fell out of the nest early, and I just picked them up and put them back, and they were fine. However, I had to separate the father from the rest of them when they left the nest, because he started to be really aggressive towards them, pulling feathers out of them, etc.

Also, when sitting on the eggs, the female especially will get very weak. Don’t be surprised if you find her sitting in the food in order to eat — she’s sitting in an awkward position so much that her legs don’t work very well outside the nest. That’s one reason why it’s important to find out if the eggs are fertile — don’t worry about bothering the birds when you find it out. They’ll go back to sitting on them as soon as you put them back.

Finally, make sure there’s a lot of calcium available for your birds during this time, in the form of calcium blocks, cuttle bones, and calcium-rich greens.

Have fun!

admin answers:

The answer is no to breeding a java with different species.normal(Grey) java finches can be hard to breed sometimes.they need to pick the right mate,so if u get a second one it may take awhile for romance.white java breed quite well better then grey’s .sexing can be hard sometimes so watch out when buying second bird.males sing females don’t.good luck with breeding.

admin answers:

NO, do not just remove the eggs- you will have to either addle them and place them back in the nest, or buy some decoy eggs.

I am working on getting finch sized decoy eggs on my bird supply website, (http://www.parrotworldusa.com) but I haven’t gotten them up, yet. They are going to be about 30 cents an egg. No biggie.

But anyways, if you just remove the eggs, the hen will just be stimulated to lay more, and that will be very depleteing on her system and she could become eggbound & die. So I suggest that you addle the eggs (Shake them up, real good) and replace in the nest. That way, they won’t hatch, but the female will not be stimualted to continue laying until she’s used up all of her calcium!

And in the future, seperate the hens & males during/around breeding season, if you don’t want babies, and/or invest in a few finch sized decoy eggs.

Also, you will want to give her a nest, so she has somewhere to sit on her eggs. Even though her eggs will no longer be fertile, or even if you’re using decoy eggs; if she lays them, she’ll want to sit on them until she looses interest (usually around the time they should be hatching, and when she realizes they are past due date, she will give up on that clutch)

Plus, she needs a comfty, privatish place to lay her eggs.

admin answers:

They don’t require a mate, but if they’ve bonded, separating them can actually cause them to go into a depression and die. Something that has worked for a friend of mine was just taking the nest box away or taking away all nesting materials. Eggs laid on the floor of a cage hardly ever will hatch. Something else that I had heard of was actually taking the female out of the cage to “play” each day. This disturbs her enough that she decides that the cage is not a safe place to raise babies and will not lay any more eggs. If you can’t really do any of these things, talk to a pet store or breeder. Ask them if you can give them babies in the future. Some places will let you, as long as they know ahead of time.

admin answers:

Um yes they will lay eggs without a nest box they will lay them in the bottom of the cage. What I do is take the eggs she already has poke with a needle in both ends of the egg scramble the yoke so that it will drain out the holes. Then put them back in the nest box. U can also replace with marbles of the same color or even fake eggs. As long as she has eggs to nest on she won’t lay anymore.