Budgie information

This is the wild color of the budgie but there are a lot of mutations. See these icons (I don't know all the English names of these color mutations, but here you can see  how they look like):

          etc.!!

• Introduction
  
  In the last fifty years, the budgie has gradually replaced the canary as the most popular cage bird in the world. This Australian bird has stolen the hearts of many people. The budgie is easily tamed to sit on the finger and is friendly and entertaining. Many of them can speak lots of words, mine can (Rakker).
  
  

• Cage
  
  The best you can buy is a very large cage because budgies are very active birds and they need lots of space. Take a look at the bars, the must be horizontal. The perches better are made from wood, no plastic!!

• Food
  
  They eat mixed seed, for bigger parakeets with sunflower seeds in it. Extra: millets, green food and fruit, for example spinach, carrots, apples, cabbage and many other fruits and vegetables are ideal. Just experiment with it.
  They also need a vitamin supplement (through the water) and egg food. Also very important is extra grit and cuttlefish bone. This is the internal skeleton of the squid like cuttlefish. It is rich in calcium salts as well as a small quantity of other trace elements.
     

• Budgie care
  
  The cage must be cleaned weekly. I clean everything just with hot water. Sometimes you can use a bleaching agent, but only when this is necessary. The foodcannes must be totally dry when you put them back in the cage, if not, than there is a possibility that the seed is going to grow moldy!! Sometimes they need a bath, take a look on my site of my birds after their bath. More info about their bath, see the page "My birds after a bath".
  
  
• Sex characteristics
  
  The adult cock's cere is bright blue and that of the hen is brown. So this isn't difficult to see. Only when the bird is still very young the cock's cere isn't the right color yet. So if you buy a young budgie ask the breeder!!
  
  

• Breeding budgies
  
  They need a nestbox with minimum measurements 15 x 15 x 23 cm.

If you want to learn more about breeding with (for example) lovebirds, please visit the Lovebird Story page.
   

• Taming your bird
  
  You put the (young) bird in a cage with less toys.. maybe one mirror or something like that. The way I tame my birds is to take them out of their cage every day. If they like it or not, and if they bite or not. Pucky, my white faced violet lovebird, is a female one. She bit me very hard in the beginning, but now she is very tame. When she "walks" for example on my table I can take her directly in my hand when I wanted to. I also do some finger training every day. But I am sure that - if the bird gets used to your hand, just the way I wrote - the bird will come and sit on your hand eventually. In the beginning it is very difficult to put them in their cage again, but I took a wooden perch to try to put them back in the cages. Okay, sometimes it took a long time to get them in the cage, but don't give it up!!
  You can also try to tame your bird with f.a. some millet. If your birds loves millet, than he/she might come on your hand to eat out of it. Most important thing:  Lots of patience!!

• New website for more information about taming your lovebird (and that works fine for a budgie too!) see www.parrotbunch.com/.
   

© Find more information about lovebirds in the book "Budgies for children and adults" by Bernhard Grössle. More info about books, please go to my books page.

---

Go Home