Budgerigars

Hi everyone, I'm hoping some of you could help me out.
One of my female budgies decided to lay eggs on the bottom of her cage last year (March, 4 eggs). She laid another egg in June, one in October. This month she's laid two eggs, 1,5 weeks apart. She always lays them on the bottom of the cage, I don't have nesting blocks (is that what they're called in English?).

There is a good chance she has polyoma. Also, I don't buy or breed, I adopt. Letting her hatch her eggs is out of the question. I replace the eggs she lays with fake eggs.
She breeds on the eggs, fake or real, with devotion.

She's not suffering from all this. She's not getting thin, lethargic or anything. But I reckon this can't be good for her if it keeps on every 3 months from now on. I've tried lots of things to prevent her laying any eggs, to no avail. I've tried rearranging her cage, covering her cage to decrease light hours, placing her cage in another spot in the room. I've replaced the egg she laid 1,5 week ago with 4 fake eggs to see if that would prevent her from laying another egg, which obviously didn't work. It doesn't even matter if she has a partner or not, she didn't have one in June. I can't place her in one of my room aviaries, since she can't fly.

I've heard and read about hormone injections and (suprelorin) implants , but there is not enough information available concerning birds to get a good idea of the benefits, possible side effects and risks. Does anyone here have experience with either one?
Does anyone have experience with a female budgie that keeps on laying eggs like this? What did you do?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-evCwsJJunQ

I'm not Australia, so I have no idea WTF is the point it's trying to make. Can someone explain? o,o

My neighbor is looking for a young budgie to adopt. I had budgies as a kid, but I'm not up on the state of the art.

She is specifically wanting a young one, because she wants to have it finger trained.

I'm hoping the community here has recommendations, cautions, and suggestions to offer on the topic.

Also, does anybody have a list of online information resources to point me to?

slow but sure progress! by sticking my hand in the cage many times a day my little green guy eventually let me touch his perch while he was setting on it. every few times i would slide my hand just a little closer to him. today, he let me touch his toe for a few seconds before flying off! i'm so freaking happy! i may be able to handle him some day if i can keep gaining his trust a little at a time.

does anyone have any tips on hand taming my budgie? he has been with us for about a month, and he seems to have settled in well, as far as eating, pooping, and doing a lot of random chirping and calling.

but he FREAKS OUT if anyone puts a hand in his cage, even to change his food and water. giving him any affection is out of the question. he flies around in such a crazy and desperate way i am afraid he will harm himself.

i am trying very hard to be patient. i try to stick my hand in his cage just a little bit every day and leave it until he calms down, but it seems he just won't calm down. i have tried holding millet seed and holding a perch in my hand but he still gets scared and flies around like crazy.

i want him to be happy, and as there are no other birds here we are his only source of attention. i want him to be happy, not afraid.

Hi group, I have been going back to school and haven't had the time to follow the community unfortunately. I posted a budgie ACEO on Etsy recently. An ACEO is a little art card - Art Cards Editions and Originals. I have a blue budgie in the works as well :-) I also have lovebirds and a cockatoo in my shop. I'm also on Zazzle if anyone wants some Jill Budgie stuff. I can't believe I sold two pairs of sneakers with Jill on them! :-)

I want to thank everyone who calmed me down in my last post. I am truly grateful for it, as I was quite worried my little guy was going to end up being a hermit.

I also wanted to let people know that he decided he wanted out, several times this afternoon and evening. He's flown around, chirped loudly at everything, eaten my food, played with his toys... and played with things that are not his toys. He was only out for short periods each time, but he definitely seems to be getting more comfortable with the space he's in (yay!!).

Thank you guys again, for reassuring me. I think Tyler is also happy that I stopped hovering near his cage, looking nervous O_o

Hi everyone :)

I must say I think I have the most stubborn pair of parakeets ever! I've bought all sorts of treats and snacks for them in the past and I always find them littered on the bottom of the cage. At first I thought it was an accident until I watched closely and saw they were actually being tossed out of the food dish!

I was hoping it'd maybe be a phase so I just recently bought another treat. One with peanuts and little pieces of dried fruit. At first I put some in with their food and it, of course, was tossed over board. I thought that maybe since it was only bigger pieces they threw out (even bigger seeds meet that fate) I started cutting them up into teeny bite sized pieces. Nope. They're not thrown out but they are completely ignored! I even tried some banana the other day and I had toss it out shortly after as it remained untouched!

I'm starting to worry about their health as I cannot let them just survive on seeds, which if it was up to them, that's exactly what they'd do!

Does anybody have any advice on what I can do to get these guys to try something new? Something actually healthy? Any way to convince them it's good and not just toss it out? Anything that parakeets absolutely live to eat?

Thanks everyone in advance for the help! I hope you and your birdies are well

I have a one year old male budgie who was quite happy and loved to be out of his cage a week and a half ago.

I've since moved into a new apartment. My furniture is all the same, but the space is a little bigger than he is used to and it echos because of a hardwood floor. He's come out of his cage once of his own volition since we've been here, flown around a couple times and then stayed in his cage for three days.

He allowed me to take him out and I covered the cage so he wouldn't simply fly back. He sat with me, and seemed okay. He talked and bobbed a little and preened my hair. However, he wanted back in his cage as soon as he saw it. I've taken him out like that today and yesterday. He still will not come out on his own.

He also seems to be sleeping a lot. He'll be sitting, talking to himself and his eyes will just start closing.

However, he is eating as much and as often as normal, his poop is solid and normal, and he is not pulling out feathers. There is no discharge on his cere or around his eyes.

I've never moved a budgie before... so I'm wondering this behavior is normal and how long it might last? I totally never expected a behavior change from him - he's very perky and loves to play and is very attached to me. Normally, when I come home from work, he's is trying to smoosh his way through the cage bars to get to me. I'm worried he might become depressed or ill because he's not gotten very much exercise in the last week.

Any thoughts or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you!

Hey guys,

my vet confirmed that my budgie, the yellow-faced, is a girl. I was looking for a male friend for her and this is them at one lady's place. I didn't notice it before, but she sent me the photos a couple of days ago and I'm confused - the color of their cere is the same! According to my vet a blueish cere with greyish color around the nostrils is a girl, so this must be two girls then. What do you think?



I read some stories on females not getting along, so I'm not feeling very comfortable about it. Tomorrow I'm going to visit her and check how she's treated, but should I take her back?

I live on a small island in Canada and, while I would much rather get a budgie from a breeder who handraises, only pet stores offer budgies. Does anybody know of a reliable breeder online who will ship budgie babies to canada?

Thank you.

Hi, I'm still pretty new to budgies so I hope you can give me some advice...

For the past two days our budgie Nacho has been listless, sitting on her favorite perch all day with her feathers puffed up. Her poop seemed a little runny too.

So we decided we'd take her to the animal hospital today as I don't have to go to work today. But when I came home and checked on Nacho, I noticed she was seemingly back to normal. Poop is normal and she's running and flying around and doing all the stuff she normally does. The only difference is that her feathers are puffed up.

What do you think? Should I take her just to be safe, or is she ok? Thanks!

My greeny Marky is possibly nine years old today. We bought him on the 3rd of January 2002, so we counted back his approximate age of six weeks and made his "birthday" November 28th,

I just find it hard to believe that I have had this little thing almost nine whole years! He's still the noisiest bird I have ever met. I have wanted to kill him soooo many times. I shook him once, I was so annoyed, but that in itself is a story, he taught me not to shake him again! He's had three cage mates, and outlived two of them, and has three sick days in his whole life. He recently invented a game which involves yelling and calling for me, then I come in, so he hops into the open cage door and looks proud. Then he repeats the yelling and calling, so I open the door, and he does a round of the room and lands on the cage. This is this weeks game, he'll get over it soon.

Nine year old budgie.... to quote my dad on my brother's 21st birthday... "Am I that old??!"

So if Benjamin Moore is a canary and his cage-lady (sinmate/wife/sister/girlfriend/whatever) passed away yesterday (RIP T-Rex) and I was thinking about getting him a new cage-mate *if* he starts to be lonely (I think he might do alright with a mirror; he seemed fine today), would my best option be:

another female canary (I've read that they're life-mates so that might not be a good idea)

a male canary (don't know anything about it; I can say she was the dominant bird though)

another bird (parakeet first and foremost since that's my real small bird love, finch as a possible second) and if so which sex?

Like I said, I think he's doing alright and my main concern is that I'm living not in my home country but in a relatively temporary situation in another country where I might end up moving back to my home country in two years (and then again, I might renew my work contract) and Benjamin Moore is already on at least his third home so I don't want to put him through another move if I can avoid it - well, no, my main concern being that I'm at work a lot and traveling a lot - on many days I'm doing well to spend 10 minutes in the same room with the birds. (Many days it's a lot longer but about once/week I return home late enough that I don't see the birds at all that day)... So I really don't want to get a brand new bird as I wouldn't want to take a little bird 'home' whenever that may be and yet I don't want him to be lonely.

Your thoughts? And what are your thoughts on moving birds via plane? I think it's very bad for the birds to move via plane but I have considered something a step larger than a parakeet...

Well, now this is interesting. Some German dude made a videogame all about budgies!

http://www.budgegeria.de/screenshots.php

Musta had a lot of time on his hands...

Hi everyone :) I haven't seen anything against this in the community rules but please let me know if it is not allowed and I will remove this:

I would like your advice on selling handmade budgerigar toys on the internet. I am a university student who has 2 lovely pet budgerigars and spends most of her time making them toys. I thought that making more and selling them on a website like etsy would be a good way to make some extra pocket money and spread the love across the world :) I wanted to know from the members here if they have ever bought handmade toys on etsy or similar websites, and if you can offer any advice of what/what not to offer. At this stage I probably will only be making smaller, budgie sized toys.







Using a ladder bought from eBay

And, as a bonus, here is a video of my bird Yoshi playing with one of those toys :)






Thanks very much!


x-posted to parrot_lovers

I shouldn't have laughed so hard, but I couldn't help it. Marky was doing his round and round and round the bedroom flying, when he came in to land on the top of his cage. I'm not sure if he just forgot about his legs, or just missed, but he landed on his face. He stood up looking really annoyed, I was holding myself up against the door laughing at him.

Yellow had an almost fail the other day too. I have a white tub ("magic white tub") that I use as a bird bath, treat dish, etc. I call it magic white tub because whenever the birds see it, they accept whatever is in it. They wont use normal bird baths, they wont eat treats from the seed dishes, etc. So I put the white tub in full of water, and Marky went down to have a bath. But Yellow being to b***h she is, stopped him, and blocked it. So he tried to get around another way, and she blocked him. So he tried to get in from above, and she blocked him. So I shouted "Hey! Yellow!" and she jumped, one wing and leg landed in the bath, she got such a shock and flapped all over the cage.

It's fun when budgies "fail"!

I was on my way to the eye hospital (nothing major) when I stopped in a a small city centre pet shop to buy a bag of bird seed. It's much cheaper in the city than the suburbs. These are small, family run pet shops which are the most common in Ireland, we have very few pet superstores. When I was there I saw a big scarlet macaw sitting on a perch at the back of the shop, it's very common for pet shop owners to have their parrots in the place with them during the day, some of them talk if they feel like it so I went to say hello. Then I saw the cage of budgies. They had about 15 very young birds. On the floor was a very sickly looking pale blue cock that didn't deserve to be there - I bred birds in the past and couldn't bring myself to put the deformed one I got to sleep - I kept her as my pet, even though she hated me - couldn't destroy her for not being perfect, but sure as hell wouldn't attempt to sell her. This bird wasn't deformed, just sickly. Then I saw a very happy, healthy blue cock sitting on a higher perch giving out hell to any bird that came near. But, one of it's legs stuck right out on a 90 degree angle!! It was stood on one leg and the other was straight out the side! I can't believe the pet shop would take in birds like the sickly youngster on the floor, and even further fetched, the bird with the right-angled leg! Who is going to buy it? I hope to God not breeders. Budgie breeding, especially in the north inner city where this shop is, is very much an old working class tradition. Like in WW2 times in the UK and Ireland. The tradition carries on and they are unscrupilous. I was passing by today because I had to go to the eye hospital again, and I was going to pop in and see if they still had the right-angled bird, but I didn't, because if they did, I'd take the damned thing home. Lucky then on my way home I took a wrong turn so deviated on my route and didn't pass the pet shop.

I am just so upset that a pet shop would even think of taking birds that are poorly or deformed. I'm not a fan of euthenasia but we did perform it at home, once, using ether (hard to get nowadays) because the bird was dying in our hands. But if a breeder who has no time nor space to keep disabled birds finds themselves with one, I would approve of a painless death, rather than leaving them sat in a pet shop.

I am half thinking of making another run into the city (have to go in soon anyway) and actually taking a look for this dodgy legged bird, and if I found it, should I take it home??

That's really my dilemma. I can't rescue every deformed budgie in Dublin, but I saw one and I could have done something at the time, but I didn't. But if the bird is still there, should I? I have a 9 year old cock who loves anything that moves, a 4 year old hen who isn't agressive, she just basically says "This is mine, get your own" (to me too) but she never really pecks Marky. Only at bedtime if he is sitting in her place, the top perch against the wall.

My only issue with introducing a young bird would be that Yellow might bully it. Marky wouldn't, Marky would say "Here's my seed dish, do you want to bully me away from it?"

http://community.livejournal.com/parrot_lovers/4433595.html This was what he used to look like. He is still not a parrot, but maybe some of you where curious how he is doing. <3



Maybe you can see, Evert, as I called him, is growing some feathers on his head! I see the pins appearing. He is also shaking less, he eats very well.





"Bye!"

Not a budgie, I hope that is fine! This little male button quail was bleeding, his head was pecked bald, and covered in dirt and everything at a pet store, it was the only button quail in a cage with many much larger doves. I bought it, cleaned him, that was two weeks ago now, and he seems to be doing fine. I don't think the feathers will grow back on his head, but he is still cute to me! <3

Just he appears to also be kind of spastic twitching, maybe because of the stress he experienced, but that does seem to happen less now. I keep him in an terrarium with nylon hoserie over it against the "jumping" they do, with soft wood shaving, grit and all kinds of seeds, he is eating well too. I hope he's happier this way despite the twitching!

After almost a year of not having a budgie, there's natter chatter in our house again. We adopted a budgie of unknown age from the humane society. He was just $7 because he was untame, and oh, how wildly untame! I watched my husband and the staff worker spend 10-15 minutes chasing him around the bird room. He's been with us a whole month and is so lively. My goodness! I forgot how small a budgie is, how much they poop and all sorts of other things. He hasn't met Muffin yet, but they probably won't be living in the same cage. He's a fast little guy and slowly getting used to us. I can't put my hand in the cage without him having a freakout :-( He's quite musical though - the sounds he makes are pretty crazy and mixed in with regular budgie talk. They called him Fiesta at the humane society, but Feisty just seemed so much more appropriate!

In May we got our first budgie, Tequila (we call him Tekii) when he was about a month old. We love him SO much and pretty much let him roam around our little apartment freely. When we're out of the house or cooking or something, we keep him in his own little room and he seems to be pretty happy. But we decided to get him a buddy for company when we're out of the house.

So we went back to the same breeder we got Tekii from and we got Nacho, who's about a month old now. The problem is Tekii refuses to play nicely with Nacho-- he'll walk over to him and kick him or otherwise pick fights with him, but of course Nacho's way too little to fight back.

We're very new to budgies so we're not sure how we should go about this. Right now Nacho can't fly so we keep him in a cage most of the day, but when he gets older we'd love it if he could be "free" just like Tekii is. and we'd REALLY love it if they'd get along with each other! Do you have any advice for us? Thank you!!

Oh, and here's a picture taken yesterday. Nacho's on the right. :)

Our Muffin has always been a bit unsure of her gender (her cere still keeps changing colour and she's at least two years old) but now she seems to be going through an ftm-phase:


Fake moustache - not only for humans anymore.

see more Daily Squee