I already put a towel on the cage.

Let's hope this works!

Here is my goal in breeding! I breeded Georgie and Quinn and got a lutino incomplete pearl, Marshmallow. I breeded her with Bio and got normal greys which some will be at least split to whiteface and pied. When they become over 18 months old, I repeat, over 18 months old. I will see if one bonds with cloudia, a normal grey split to pied and whiteface hen. And get healthy colorful babies!
This will take place at summer vacation

What do you think?

That could work. Are you aiming for a whiteface? Because I can tell you, they're sassy.

All Marshmallow's sons will be split to lutino pearl because they'll get the genes from her. So if one of these boys pairs up with Cloudia, you can expect some babies in these colors.

Oh, and they'll be split to cinnamon from Dad on their other X. Do you know how genetic crossovers work? Crossovers between lutino and cinnamon are rare, but pearl crossovers are common and the sons of Marshmallow and Bio will give you some cinnamon pearl chicks. Hopefully the pearling will be fairly complete; I don't know whether partial pearling carries down consistently through the generations or if it's something that varies from bird to bird in the family tree.

There's more info on crossovers at http://www.littlefeatheredbuddies.com/i ... overs.html if you need it. By pure coincidence, it uses an example where a male has lutino pearl on one X and cinnamon on the other, and the pearl crosses over - exactly what will happen sometimes when Marshmallow and Bio's sons start making babies.

I went to change their food and when I came back I saw Marshmallow and Bio mating!! I got him off before he fertilized her. This happened at 7:00!

I put them to bed at 7:00pm yesterday, but I think I'll have to do it at 6:00pm

I can't shorten their food limits since they already have a clutch. Any more ideas of good hormonal technics that won't make them stop feeding their chicks?

You're really limited here because of the babies. I've never pushed my birds to the point where they lose interest in the chicks, so I don't know how much leeway you have. It probably varies from bird to bird anyway. Keep in mind that it usually takes about a week for long nights to have an effect, and the presence of a nestbox is going to make it harder. Definitely don't let them see the empty nestbox when you have the babies out. Stuff a towel in the doorway or something to keep the parents out! It's hard to stop cockatiels from double clutching, and you might end up having to boil eggs.

Okay thanks for the input. I don't mind boiling eggs. How long does it need to boil for it to kill the embryo? Can I save the eggs and use them as dummies in the future, or is it best to throw them out? I think it would be best if I had dummy eggs...

Dummy eggs are good, I have two sets of them. I've never boiled an egg so I don't know the details, and I don't know how safe it is to keep them. It seems like they would go bad after a while.

I've kept a lot of infertile/non-incubated eggs from hens that either didn't mate with a male or mated with an extremely inappropriate male. These eggs simply dry out in the desert climate and don't go bad. But I'd never give them back to a bird to sit on because they're basically hollow inside and would break pretty easily.

I will go ask my parents if we can order them! A site that sells nice formed ones will be helpful to me

It will also encourage Marsh and Bio to go in the nest more often which means...FOOD!!!

Let's hope this works

This site has them: http://www.dummyeggs.com/ They're not cheap but they're very realistic looking. When I have real eggs and fake eggs mixed together, I have to look carefully to tell which is which.