parakeet egg in my cage! help!

Question
hi- my female bird has been crazy for the past week !  eating vociferously and making a HUGE! mess! food everywhere and she tore up all the paper in there--and i thought--is she pregnant ?  is she tearing up the paper to make a nest?
i put a small bowl in their smallish bird cage....
any way--i'm about a week behind on changing her paper because she just kept tearing up and i wasn't sure what to do!
Anyway-there is a small whitish egg as of today! i can't believe it!  i'm thrilled but i don't know what to do! she didn't have it in the bowl---she had it in a small corner and there's not even hardly any paper shreds around it!
it's all by itself with no warmth!
there's also alot of poop in the cage and i want t oclean it out--
what should i do and how should i go about it?
also--this lady my mom knew died in early july and my mom brought this cockatiel over--which we really like--
well- i had had the birds' cages next to each other because the cockatiel really fussed if he wasn't near them--but then he got to fussing regardless, so i moved him to the laundry room--and then-the parakeets started all this cooing to each other and so forth, which i hadn't realized they had kind of stopped doing while they were around him.....
anyway after3-5 days of cooing--was when she started making this monumental mess! i kept cleaning around the cage--when i did it 4 times in one day is when i moved the parakeet into th laundry room also-where she continued making a mess--
anyway! now that i know for sure what is going on i definitely want to help! please tell me what to doto help in any way i can for her to be able to raise healthy babies!
thanks!
rachael Wright

Answer
Hi, Rachael.  Thanks for posting.

I love it that you are so excited!  There's so much you need to know!

She's laying eggs on the cage bottom because she needs a nesting box.  If you can afford to, go to a local pet store and buy a parakeet nesting box (about $10-$15).  Attach the nesting box to the cage on the outside (since you say their cage is small), with the hole facing the inside of the cage.  The nesting box hole will have to be positioned on the cage where the birds can go in and out of the hole, but not escape from the cage.  Depending on what style cage you have, you might have to cut some cage wire or you can use a dish opening (if you don't understand this, let me know).  You might even need a bigger cage, depending on the size of the current one.  

Once you have a nesting box up, the birds may take right to it and go in and continue laying up to 6-8 eggs, 1 every other day.  OR they might be scared of it at first, but leave it there and they'll get used to it.  You can choose to move the egg(s) laid on the cage bottom to the nesting box, but be very careful handling them.  Use gloves or something so you don't touch the eggs with your bare skin.  The parents might abandon those eggs and only accept any laid in the nesting box.  This depends on the individual birds.

She may not start incubating her eggs (sitting on them) until the second egg is laid (some start with the second, some the first, some the third).

Once you have the above done, or even before, go to my website and read:

http://www.angelfire.com/falcon/birdinfo/index.html

Come back with all your questions!  You need to decide right now what you will do with any babies that might arrive.  This is very important before you allow your birds to continue this process.  Parakeets are prolific breeders, and you could end up with more babies than you can deal with within a relatively short period of time.  If you want to sell or give them away, they will need to be tame, which means handfeeding them.

Chrys