BellaOnline Forums Home and Garden Birds Zebra finches

I have two zebra finches that have laid 4 eggs about a week and a half ago. I would like to see these eggs hatched but don't know how to help?!?! How long do they incubate and once they have hatched, how can I help the parents keep them alive? What do I feed them, etc. I would appreciate any advise....thanks <img src="/images/graemlins/rolling.gif" alt="" />

The eggs will be about another week (or a little more) before they start hatching (depending on when the parents began incubating). Just keep feeding the parents the way you have and begin to add a bit of dry egg food into their diet. They will feed their babies a variety from what you give them. Try not to disturb the parents and let them do their job.

Thanks so much for the advise....the babies have hatched!!! We have four and they are looking good. They started to hatch (2 hatched) on Friday, July 7th. The other two hatched over this weekend. We have done our best not to disturb them but we do have an inquisitive 8 year old daughter just DYING to see the new babies!! How long will it be before they will be leaving the nest? Also, what is "dry egg food"? We got some mealworms on the advise of the pet store...was this a good idea?
thanks again

The babies will start coming out of the nest at about 3 weeks of age. Sometimes they fall out before they are ready (caught on parent's foot or other mistake). If this happens, I just pick the baby up & put him back.

Dry egg food is a product that you can purchase in many pet stores. The parents love to feed it to their babies. Zebra Finch don't really need live food for raising babies and may not even look at the mealworms.

Also, if you haven't seen my article on the baby Society Finches growing up, maybe you could show all the pictures to your daughter.

I'm just about ready to head out on vacation, so don't have time to look up the URL at this moment, but its under the bird profiles category/canary finch sub category/society finch sub category. You can get to it from the main birds page here - just follow the link in my signature.

Thank you so very much for the info.....have a wonderful vacation!