Zebra finches. Possible to incubate eggs?

[Serin]

I did just that. Im raising 4 canaries now but they are already 2 weeks old and are eating off the handle of a teaspoon now.

 

[Serin]

 

[WolfGirlMagic]

Oh my!
That's so neat.
Do you find they stay quite tame after hand rearing?
I don't keep finches after one died from stress at the vet. Perhaps the handling would be less stressful for one more tame?

 

[Serin]

They do as long as you continue to work with them and play with them. Just a few days in the cage without handling around the very sensitive time between when they stop needing to be hand-fed and when they are fully mature and they can regress and become fearful again. This happened with my first hand-fed canaries three years ago, I thought they would stay tame and let them out into my aviary and very quickly they copied the other canaries and became wild. So with these, they will be staying inside, and being handled much more.

If you can keep them friendly until about 4 months old, they will be friendly forever. During this period it's very important to not chase them with your hands or let them see other untame birds show fear of you.

 

[ChickenCanoe]

They do as long as you continue to work with them and play with them. Just a few days in the cage without handling around the very sensitive time between when they stop needing to be hand-fed and when they are fully mature and they can regress and become fearful again. This happened with my first hand-fed canaries three years ago, I thought they would stay tame and let them out into my aviary and very quickly they copied the other canaries and became wild. So with these, they will be staying inside, and being handled much more.

If you can keep them friendly until about 4 months old, they will be friendly forever. During this period it's very important to not chase them with your hands or let them see other untame birds show fear of you.

Cool. Where do you live?
I worked with a biologist working with Macaws in Costa Rica. He was British and back home he had an aviary with all sorts of tropical birds. He told me how the cages were arranged with a wall between him and the birds so when he fed them, they couldn't tell it was a human feeding them. In CR we didn't do it that way and since some were being raised for release, he thought that was the wrong way to care for them.