I used to have several of these when I lived with my parents and we were hobby breeders. It worked successfully and we had over 50 parakeets along with several other kinds of birds in our walk-in aviary.

The parakeets may take a while to investigate the house, but once they get over the fear, they love it. They all bite at the opening and make it bigger. The males like to sit on top while the female is inside sitting on the eggs.

The box is made of plywood, and the top opens to give you access to the inside for cleaning. You probably won't need to clean it until the eggs hatch, as the parents don't poop in it. Some of these nest boxes have a concave area in the floor part that helps the eggs stay in one place. I like to use wood shavings (not pine though) and the birds seemed to accept it as nesting material. They also will add their own feathers to the nest.

The only problem is that sometimes the babies end up perched in the opening and they fall out sometimes and get stuck on the cage bottom. Since their feet are usually all toes forward, they get stuck there and it's cold. You need to be careful and check periodically as the babies can die from weather conditions or lack of food.

Also, when the mother decides to lay more eggs, she may kick out the older babies, so you need to be the surrogate mom sometimes too.

Once the eggs hatch, you should clean it out once a day and put fresh materials inside to keep it clean and so that the babies don't get sick. Timing is everything so I do it when the parents are eating.

We have successfully raised many parakeets and cockatiels using these simple wood nesting boxes (the cockatiel one is much bigger).

Pros: Birds can nest and have a family

Cons: they chew and widen the opening

I had one of these for the lovebird I had.She use to go in the hole and climb out the top.She thought it lots of fun.later on when she got a mate the had babies in it.great cause you can open the top to see whats going on.

Pros: easy to clean

Cons: none