Zebra Finches - Breeding and Raising Finches

If you are thinking about breeding finches, then breeding Zebra Finches is a slam dunk. These little birds are breeding machines. They will produce young birds at an amazing rate and they aren't particularly fussy about where they do it. Almost any enclosure will do as long as you provide an appropriate nesting site for them to lay eggs, incubate them and nurture them until they become independent.

The absolute minimum size cage for your Zebra Finches to successfully mate is a standard flight cage that measures at least three feet in length, that's a bit shy of one meter. If you provide a nesting box, I use semi-open baskets available at any pet shop selling birds, mainly because they are inexpensive, easy to clean and my birds seem to not object. I place the nest high and near a corner however as long as the nest is placed high in the cage, no worries, your finches will find the nest and produce baby birds rapidly.

I supply coconut fibers and, when available, a bit of soft grass for the mating pair to line the inside of the nesting box. Rarely will your finches build a nest on the floor of the cage as they might do in the wild; while they may lay eggs on the floor of the cage, these eggs are unlikely to produce young birds.

Once the eggs are laid, generally four to five eggs at a time, the parent birds take turns incubating them. They will hatch in a range of twelve to fourteen days after being laid. During incubation and for the next few weeks, your finches must be fed a diet that includes seeds and is heavily supplemented with insect protein; mealworms do just fine for the insect protein and are available at most pet stores in a live but dormant form from the refrigerator. The parents share the feeding responsibility for the young birds.

As the young birds near independence but have not left the nest, the parents sometimes begin to neglect the young birds and resume their courtship behaviors. If this happens, remove the nest from the cage and hand feed the young birds until they reach independence. Crushing seeds and mealworms and adding a tiny bit of liquid will work just fine as you feed the little ones with an eye-dropper.

The young Zebra Finches mature quickly and may attempt to mate as early as eleven weeks old. It is better, however, to separate them by gender until they are at least nine months old because early mating will produce lethargic young birds.