Breeding Commonly Kept Caged Birds

Although caged birds can be bred during any season of the year, spring seems to be the time that even indoor birds choose to start nesting like their outdoor counterparts. This may be due temperature changes, even though many people have heating and air conditioning, their homes and apartments are usually a bit warmer during the spring and summer months. Mainly the breeding season is brought on by the lengthening of daylight, and captive caged birds kept near windows will respond to the longer daytime hours by gearing up to lay eggs and raise young. When breeders want to get their birds to breed indoors during other times of the year besides spring, they will use artificial full spectrum lights to lengthen the amount of light their birds get during the day. Customers that own finches, parakeets, and cockatiels will sometimes decide that they want to breed their pet, and certainly many products are made to help them achieve this goal.

The most commonly kept and therefore bred finches are the zebra and society finches. Both species are usually very easy to breed. Owners should be sure their birds are at least ten months old before setting up a pair, as young birds can have problems with laying eggs and caring for the young properly. For most finches, including these two species, a closed wicker nest will work best, although some will use small wooden nest boxes. Note that canaries, which are a species of finch, prefer the open cup nests over the closed ones. All finches like to build a nest, and nesting materials available commercially from manufacturers are the best to use. Materials at home, like cotton filling used for pillows or yarn, can get tangled around the bird's legs or toes and cut off circulation, and so should never be used. The nest material can be clipped to the side of the cage near a perch so the birds can pull it out and place it in the nest themselves.

Budgerigars, also known as parakeets, and cockatiels are the two most commonly bred parrot species. Both prefer breeding in nest boxes that have a bare bottom with an indent in the wood for the eggs to collect in, although the cockatiel box is larger than the budgerigar one. Nest boxes are readily available from a number of manufacturers and usually made of plastic or wood. Bird owners wishing to breed their budgies or cockatiels should be sure they are at least a year old, especially the female, and be aware that if their bird is really tame, it may not be after pairing it with another bird. Budgie pairs generally won't breed anyway unless they can hear other budgies around them. A cockatiel pair will usually breed even if they are the only birds in the home.

Sexing finches is fairly easy, especially the zebra finches as the male has a bright orange cheek patch that is absent in females. But an albino male zebra finch has no cheek patch and looks exactly like an albino female, so to sex them look at the color of the beak. The male's will always be redder and darker than the females, and only the male finches have a "song" and not just quick chirps like the females. Budgies are easy to sex as no matter what color they are, the males will develop a blue cere (the area of skin around the nostrils at the top of the bill) and the females a tan to brown one once the birds reach six months of age. Male budgies also will usually chatter more than females, even as youngsters. Gray cockatiel males will develop a yellow face with orange cheek patches when they go through their first molt also around six months of age, while females will just have the orange cheek patch. But with all the cockatiel color mutations available, the yellow face doesn't always develop well if at all. But no matter what color, only the male cockatiels will "sing", which means having more than one sound or note put together, while females generally give one sound or note at a time. One of the best ways to sex cockatiels is by looking for barring in the wing flight feathers and tail feathers. Young cockatiels all have this barring, but once they have gone through their first molt, the barring will be gone in the male birds while the females will retain the bars throughout their life. In very light colored cockatiels, like lutinos, the barring can be seen in an older female by looking at the tail carefully, while the male's would be solid in color.

Be should be sure to feed a good quality seed and/or pellet mix along with lots of veggies plus a good vitamin, mineral, and amino acid supplement to their birds (and to give extra calcium and "treat" foods made for breeding birds before birds start a nest). The breeding cage must be large enough for the two birds to live and breed in comfortably, which means that both birds should be able to flap their wings easily inside their cage. When possible, the two birds that an owner wishes to breed should be placed next to each other in different cages for approximately two weeks before placing them in the same cage together. Once the owner has seen that they are getting along well, then a nest or nest box can be introduced in one to three weeks. If the birds are not getting along, then they should obviously be separated and the owner should try different birds. The environment needs to be correct for many birds to breed readily in captivity, and so the amount of light given to the pair should be increased over a period of two to four weeks so they have around twelve hours of daylight and twelve hours of arkness. The breeding cage should be placed in a peaceful area of the house, away from any loud noises or kids running around. With some luck, a bird owner will wake up one morning and hear some wonderful peeping coming from the nest, a sound of sheer delight among bird breeders.

Different bird species will lay different size clutches of eggs, have different incubation times (from egg laying to hatching) and variable fledgling times (when the babies leave the nest). The following are averages for some caged birds:

Most Finches (like Zebra)
Clutch size: 4-7 eggs
Incubation time: 12-16 days
Fledgling time: 4-5 weeks

Budgerigars (parakeets)
Clutch size: 4-6 eggs
Incubation time: 18-20 days
Fledgling time: 5-6 weeks

Cockatiels
Clutch size: 3-6 eggs
Incubation time: 20-23 days
Fledgling time: 5.5-7 weeks