Nesting behavior

[Sim]

It seems to me that there are few places on the internet where to discuss budgie breeding that are both active and not strongly against it. So, I was hoping you could help me.
As I wrote in my introduction thread, two of my budgies are Charlie and Sandy, 3-year-old male and 1½-year-old female, they are a couple and live in the same cage. I thought it could be a good idea to give them a nest and see if they wanted to breed, so I did it about a month ago.

I have one breeding experience from 5 years ago, my other male budgie Sid and a female that has been dead for a few years had chicks and it went relatively well. I remember is that the female took a while to get brave enough to go inside the nest, but once she did it she started spending more and more time in it, until I saw her mating with Sid and she laid eggs.
So, Sandy's current behavior is confusing me: only a couple days passed before she started going in the nest, but the time she spends in it doesn't increase. She stays in it for a few minutes, I can hear her scratching the bottom, then she gets out and repeats the process several times throughout the day, but never more than the previous day. She also seems uninterested in mating, although of course I can't keep an eye on them for the entire day.

I know that, like every human being, every budgie is different, but I thought maybe from her behavior's description you could help me understand if I should just wait more or if she mistook the nest for a toy/doesn't like it enough/is stopped by something. Feel free to ask anything else.
Thanks in advance!

[Marianne Marlow]

Maybe she is trying to get the nest ready by scratching it?

I have no experience of breeding!

[Ira]

Sounds confident. She might be testing it, starting to scrape up bits of wood with her beak, trying to get it how she likes it.

She'll probably decide she feels inclined to mate at some point. Maybe things aren't quite to her liking yet.

[Hezz]

First things first - is she actually in breeding condition at the moment? It may take a while for her hormones come come back around to breeding mode, and having the nest box already in position and familiar to her may even help her get there more quickly. Be aware, though, that not all budgie hens are desperate to reproduce, but the fact that she is showing that she is willing to mate is a good step in the right direction. Now might be the time to increase the calcium and protein components of her diet as well. As a former breeder used to say, you only get out of an egg what you put into it.

[Sim]

Thanks a lot for your opinions! For now, she pushes Charlie away when he gets too "heated up" with the courting, but her cere is indeed not as brown as it was other times, so maybe that's the reason. Of course I know that not all budgies succeed in breeding, so I'll always take good care of them whether it happens or not.
I've been giving them boiled egg lately (and trying to get them to eat more vegetables and fruit, in addition to seeds and pellets), plus they always have cuttlebone and a mineral block available, so hopefully this will help too.

[Hezz]

If she is still pushing Charlie away at times, and her cere is still not a dark crusty nutmeg-brown then I’d suggest that she is still thinking about the idea. Making her diet seem like a time of plenty is what stimulates the wild budgies to breed and does the same with our captive-bred ones as well.

[Sim]

It seems like Sandy is less interested in the nest these days. I also noticed that if Charlie courts her she initially seems to be okay with it, but after a while (especially if he's too "excited") she pushes him away. Who knows, maybe the position of the cage/nest or something else that she doesn't like might as well be the problem. How long would you wait before removing the nest if nothing happens?
By the way, today she was actually more interested in making a mess with the cauliflower I gave them...

[Hezz]

If she is showing less interest in both the nest box and Charlie, I wouldn’t be holding out hopes for this time around, but that’s just my opinion. I think I’d just be letting her get on with her own busy-ness. (Because hens are always busy!)