breeding zebras

Question
I have a breeding pair of zebras.  They recently laid a clutch of 5 eggs.  3 of the 5 hatched, but the babies were kicked out of the nest and they all died.  So, I took the nest out of the cage, cleaned the cage top to bottom and woke up the next morning to 2 eggs on the floor of the cage.  I know it is not healthy for them to keep having clutches and I thought my cleaning of the cage and removal of the nest would stop the laying for a while.  As much as I would love to have babies, I do not want to make my finches unhealthy by letting them breed to death.  I wanted to wait about 2 or 3 months before letting them have another clutch.  So, how can I stop the laying?  Do I have to separate them?  I hate to do that.  I think that would make them sad.  Any advise would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks!

Answer
Fathers kick the babies out so they can mate with the females again. I don't agree with separating them either. What I find works is letting the female sit on dud eggs. The way to make dud eggs is to take her own eggs and stick them in the fridge overnight (I like to mark them with a permanent marker so I know they're duds). Then put them back in her nest and let her sit on them (she has to have recently laid eggs for this to work).
Let her have the eggs for two weeks (roughly the time it takes for the eggs to hatch) and then take them away and repeat the process when she lays again. She still gets rest and there are no babies that die because of a male who is more interested in mating.