I have baby lovebirds

Question
My female black faced loverbird Juliet had eggs awhile back but pushed them out of her nest so we purchesed a nesting box for her to lay her eggs. She dug a hole with her nesting material and since then has been in their only coming out to feed/drink. Her first brood was 6 but sadly they all cracked so after buying the nest box I hoped that they would survive. I got a book about lovebirds and have read up about them but none of them seem to answer my question. It has been 23 days and little chirps can be heard. Yesterday my mother and myself looked inside and noticed two rather large babies and what appears to be four small ones. My question is, should I take the babies out to clean the nesting area or should I leave them inside? Also when would be a good time to get them use to being held or handled?

Answer
Hi, Hope,

Congratulations on the baby lovies!  

It would really be best to clean the area where the babies sit so they don't have contact with their feces, however, try not to remove too much of the nesting material unless necessary.  Lovies like big nests and too much disturbance may bother the parents (depending on the individual birds involved).  I don't recommend adding nesting material to the cage for the parents to take to the nesting box because they may cover up some of the babies in the process and the babies might not survive if covered up.  

You can handle the babies at any time the parents will allow you to.  Lovie parents can be very nasty when they have eggs/babies, depends again on the individual birds involved.  In fact, with lovie babies, you need to handle them as much as possible or they will not be tame when they get older.  This is why breeders pull babies from the parents when they are very young and handfeed them.  When handfed by a human, baby birds imprint on humans, thus, making tame, pet birds.  

You really need to be checking inside the nesting box every day/couple times per day to ensure the babies are OK and being fed enough.  The larger ones will get fed first, so watch the young ones to ensure they are getting enough food.  If they aren't, you'll need to step in and help the parents feed the babies.  I like to pull the biggest/older babies for handfeeding, while allowing the parents to focus on the little ones.  This allows the littliest ones to grow big and strong like the older ones.  

Chrys