Trick or 'Tiel wrote:How do you give them a mate without allowing them to breed?
Like Liz said, it's just matter of switching the good eggs for fake or infertile ones. When a bird is kept to a strict solar schedule and seasonal diet (meaning less protein during the resting season -aka winter), they are only hormonal for a period of time so it's not as if they would be laying all the time which would be terribly unhealthy for the bird and lots of work for us. They just go through the normal 'motions' for the same period of time they are supposed to, just like the wild birds would. Once the daylight hours reach a certain number (this is determined through evolution which fine-tunes their reproductive cycles so they only breed when it's the ideal time of the year - the point when the body recognizes the 'change' in season and reacts by starting or stopping the production of sexual hormones is called 'the point of photorefractoriness'), they start producing sexual hormones and this is when they start their 'courtship' - depending on the species, there are different behaviors. there could be a dance (like senegals do), there could be vocalizations (like budgies do), there could start making a nest (like cockatoos do), etc. When the level of hormonal production reaches a certain amount and their gonads (sexual organs) are now active and large enough to allow reproduction, they go into 'nesting' - the females approve and accept (or not) the nest and start working on it (with parrots, this is not a complicated affair as it is with passerines -like canaries, for example, which make incredible engineering masterpieces). Then the hen starts laying eggs (the size of the clutch -number of eggs- is genetically predetermined in all parrot species except for the budgies that are 'indeterminate layers' while all others are 'determinate' which means that, given the right conditions, the hen will always produce the same number of eggs in every clutch). In parrots and as far as I know, they don't lay every day (canaries do) but they all usually lay early in the morning so, if you check the nest in the am, when you are cleaning the cage, and you find a new egg, all you have to do is either render that same egg infertile (boiling it or freezing it will do it but, in my personal experience, addling doesn't always do the trick) OR switch it for a fake egg. And there you have it! The birds are happy and feel fulfilled because they are able to do what nature ordained they should, and we are happy because the birds are happy but we still don't get any babies!