Playful Budgies

This is an extremely popular little bird which like the cockatiel is native to Australia where they live in communal flocks. Due to the diverse climate of Australia, they are also a hardy bird, which quickly adapts to most lifestyles. Budgies are not a type of bird that is hand fed from a breeder. Typically they are raised by their own parents and are ready to go at about 8 weeks. It is best to purchase a budgie under three months of age to have the greatest chance of successful training.

You can usually distinguish a young bird from an older one by physical characteristics. A young Budgerigar has a smooth cere, black stripes (except for the light colored types) on the forehead (giving the term "bar-head" for a immature Keet), and a completely black eye. Within six months, the forehead is white or yellow and the eye has a white iris. The male's cere (the area above the beak around the nostrils) remains smooth. The hen's darkens in color and becomes crusty and flakey in appearance, not to be confused with a mite infestation. This is a normal sign of sexual maturity and can be used to differentiate the genders in Albinos and Lutinos, where cere color is no help.

In general, the color of a budgie's cere is the simplest indicator of sex in adult budgies: males are blue, and females are white, light beige, reddish, or brown. While it is fairly accurate, the color of the cere cannot always be used to sex a budgie. With some color varieties, like albinos, lutinos, fallows, and some recessive pieds like harlequins, both males and females have beige or pink colored ceres. Other visual sexing methods include females having an almost invisible, whitish rings around their nostrils, and males having more rounded, bulbous ceres, both of which are often hard to recognize to the untrained eye. And many people also say that females bite harder than males and that males have rounder heads while females heads are more flat on the top.

The budgie’s wings should be clipped so that it will not panic and fly away from you during the training sessions. When you first get your budgie you should spend some time each day holding it close to your chest and letting it wiggle out of one hand and crawl into another, this is a great beginning for building a trusting relationship. Your budgie breeder can help you with training tips. These little guys train in a relatively short period of time and can even be taught to do tricks and become talented talkers. One budgie of record was known to repeat over 100 words! Always remember to be patient with your bird and to go at its pace rather than your own.

Cage housing for these birds should be big enough to allow flapping of wings, playing with toys and climbing activities. Budgies fly horizontally so it is best to look for a cage that offers length over height. Your bird should be in an area of the house where it will see a lot of the family, i.e. a den or family room. Do not put your bird in the kitchen area where it could possibly be affected by cooking fumes. It also should not be in an area where it could experience extreme temperature change, i.e. a full-sun window that may get very hot in the summer especially. Budgie diet is ideally formulated pellet with some limited amounts of seed and vegetable. A seed diet may seem OK for a couple years, but ultimately the bird will die as a result of the excesses and imbalances that are found from the seed diet.

An avian checkup is recommended on an annual basis and routine wing trims are essential. As with most birds, the budgie will bond quicker to you if it is a single bird. If you have a busy lifestyle and feel you would not have a lot of time to interact with your bird, you may want to consider having two as they are flock birds and do like companionship. The typical lifespan is two to seven years.