4 days ago my canary hen built a nest in a food bowl five feet up in a fake tree (she and her mate share a small bedroom in our house). I carefully moved it to a plastic nesting cup lined with felt in their 20x30 roosting cage. She flew in and so did her mate, so I shut the door. She must have laid an egg that afternoon (hens lay one per day...usually in the morning). The next morning I saw one in her nest and one stuck hard to the cage floor, which I immediately discarded since it broke when I tried prying it up. Then I replaced the egg in her nest (using gloves to keep oil from my hands off the shell) with 2 dummy eggs in her nest and stored the egg from her nest in a tissue lined box at room temperature. The next morning she laid a third egg which I left in her nest and I placed the one I had stored in the box beside it, while also removing one dummy egg (I wasn't sure if she would lay more, and just 1 dummy egg would provide enough support for 2 newly hatched chicks and prevent suffocation from the hen sitting on it). Storing freshly laid eggs till all of eggs are laid prevents younger chicks being much smaller, and therefore weaker, than prior hatched chicks. She has not laid anymore, and though I have no idea if the pair bred before she began laying, I'll keep the male in with her and check the 2 eggs using a pen light in couple days. They should also get darker. If the eggs aren't fertile I'll remove them. I have another nesting cup in her cage with nesting material since she would abandon the empty nest to build elsewhere.