Budgie Questions

[Budgie_Birthday]

Alright. I have some questions about budgies so I am prepared for my budgie. Some of these I already asked, but I don't want to keep switching all over the place to find it.

1). Should I get horizantal or vertical bars for my cage?
2). Can you tell whether your budgie is a boy or a girl before it is 3-4 months old?
3). How often should I clean the cage?
4). Do budgies actually shell their seeds?
5). What should I use to clean my cage?
6). Tel me about the covering that I have to put over the cage at night.
7). What sort of toys should I get my budgie? How many?
8). Is it a problem to have 4 cats who love to come into my room?
9). Is it a problem to have 3 dogs who bark ALOT?
10). What should I feed my budgie?

Thanks everyone. I will check back with more questons when I think of some. :p

[Amy]

Answers:

1). Most cages have both horizonal and vertical bars on different sides, but if you had to choose between the two, Horizonal.

2). Ask Bea or someone, I don't know!

3). Clean the cage at least once a week depending on how dirty it is.

4). Yes, they use their beaks to 'dehusk' their seeds to get at the edible bit inside. The bits you find on the floor are husks (The outer shell.) not seeds.

5). Use a brush, water and animal safe disinfectant. Not too much though.

6). Just an old sheet or something, their bound to chew it up from inside!

7). You can have unlimited numbers of toys! Its best to buy specially made budgie toys, but you can have a go at making your own.

8). If you keep your budgie in a place where people go a lot he will not be bored, and keep him up high away from the cats.

9). It is a bit of a problem but you can decide whether they are a hazard or not.

10). Feed him a mixture of seed, pellets, vegetables, fruit but check they're alright to feed him.

That should answer a few of your questions, I hope!

[Budgie_Birthday]

ummm. . . . thanks! i didn't expect all of them in one go. but wow!

[Amy]

Thats alright, Sorry for doing them all!

[Budgie_Birthday]

i am not angry or anything. i was just surprised.

[Budgiekin]

Great answer Billy and Lily! I just thought I would repost some of the information in another topic area here as well since it addresses your questions as well, and it doesn't hurt to get a few perspectives about how other people care for their budgies. Then you can decide what would work best for you.

CLEANING CAGES


In terms of cleaning your budgie's cage, I do a daily cleaning of the bottom portion of the cage (i.e. I pull it apart from the top cage part and wash it in hot soapy water; then rinse and dry thoroughly before I put a new clean layer of paper towel as a liner on the bottom. I also wipe the perches daily and as needed (basically whenever I notice a poop on a perch, I wipe it off). I also wash all of the food dishes and water dishes daily.

For a really thorough clean of the entire cage, I usually do that once a season. (I should probably do it more though!). To do that, I take the whole cage apart (removing the perches, dishes, toys etc). and wash the whole cage from top to bottom. When I am doing a SUPER thorough job, I actually scrub the cage with a nail brush and then soak it in a dilute bleach solution; if you do that, you have to make sure you don't do this near your budgie and that you rinse and dry the cage VERY thoroughly.

BUDGIE TOYS

Toys can actually be a very important part of your budgie's life. It can keep them busy and provide hours of entertainment for them. I have several (okay, probably over a hundred!) different toys that I rotate in and out of my budgie's cages. You can find plenty of toys for budgies in pet stores. I encourage you to take a look and see what is available! It can be quite fun shopping for new toys! Just be careful of the really cheap toys that can break easily. Toys that are too large can also scare your budgie. You'll probably want to supervise your budgie for a while whenever you introduce a new toy.

While I'm at it, I should mention that sometimes when you try to put a new toy in their cage, they either freak out, or they get really nervous. A tip to prevent that is to simply hang the toy on the outside of your budgie's cage for a couple of days before actually putting it inside. That has worked very well for me.

DOGS, CATS AND BUDGIES

Having budgies and dogs can be a difficult combination to work with, especially if your dog barks loudly. This can scare your budgies quite easily, and then you'll end up with nervous budgies. However, this is not to say that budgies cannot get used to barking, but you will certainly want to keep your budgies in a different room, perhaps with the door closed when the barking gets out of control, or if your budgies are looking frightened.

Since you also have cats, you will certainly want to keep the cage out of reach of your cat. The last thing you would want to happen is for your cage to get knocked over, scaring your budgies, and worse, your budgies escaping and flying away (Billy and Lily has had that unfortunate experience) or even worse, dying from the trauma. It is possible to have them coexist in the same house, but you will need to supervise your cat and budgies when they are in the same room.

DIET

I can't stress enough the importance of feeding your budgie a varied diet. I am so glad that Billy and Lily included pellets in her list of food suggestions! Good work Billy and Lily! Seeds just don't cut it on their own!

In addition to the vegetables (like carrot and broccoli) and fruit (like apples and oranges), you will want to provide your budgies with a cuttle bone and a mineral block. Those two things provide your budgies with the calcium and other minerals that they require to flourish. I should also add, that veggies should probably be offered more than fruit since fruits contain a lot of sugars, and vegetables are the more nutrient rich of the two.

Even if your budgies don't eat the new foods right away (especially the pellets and veggies), keep offering them daily! Even eat them in front of your budgies so they recognize it as food. (Well, okay, you don't have to eat the pellets. . . just the veggies!) :p

COVERING YOUR BUDGIES' CAGE

You can use just about any kind of blanket or heavy sheet, but just be careful not to use something that your budgies could easily catch their toenails in. Since it's pretty cold here in Canada for many months of the year, I use pretty heavy, and multiple blankets, but I don't completely cover the cages at night for sleeping time because my budgies have had night frights in the past (a night fright is when your budgie all of a sudden begins to flap frantically and uncontrollably in their cage at night; they may do this in reaction to a noise, or even nothing that is apparent to you at all; they can injure themselves pretty easily when this happens). To deal with night frights, I have a night light in my budgie's bedroom he room and leave the front of the cage uncovered.

[Budgie_Birthday]

The problem is, I can't move my cage around that easily.My cats prowl the whole house, so I can't move my budgie without my ats following and scaring the heck out of him!

[Budgiekin]

Does anyone have any suggestions about how to deal with the cat situation? I don't have expertise in that area, but there must be ways to have a cat and a budgie coexist in the same house/room. :S

[Budgie_Birthday]

Sorry. I put that last post in the wrong tense. It implied that I already have my budgie Pickle. Sorry! I don't have him yet. But what I said is still true. If my cat Tango can scare the heck out of my dog Rufus, I don't even want to think of how Pickle will feel! :scared:

[Bea]

When you're playing with your budgie just lock the cat away. When the budgie is safe in the cage make sure the doors are securely shut so that the kitty can't get to the budgie. You'll have to introduce them slowly or else Tango could scare Pickle so badly that he has a heart attack or something nasty. I know people on other forums i go on have budgies and cats. One person's budgie bites the kitty on the nose through the cage bars!

Now, about sexing baby budgies. I'm sure i've covered this elsewhere but i'll put it here too. Young males will have translucent pink ceres with no white around the nostrils. Females will have bluey purple ceres with pretty obvious white rings around the nostrils:
http://i42.photobucket.com/albums/e346/blink_oz_mig/MirrorOz005Custom.jpg
Male

http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y17/Baby_Blinkie/BubbleAndJasper.jpg
Left-female, right-male

[miss_missy]

kitty kittys what we did with our cats. was we took the bird and had the cat next to us and let the cat check it out. We didn't want our little angel(yeah right) getting jelouse so we introduced them alot. till the cat new it was just bird and it was still number one ,, that is something about cats they have to come first and be royal just as anything else in the house would or they will fix the problem....

[Budgie_Birthday]

When you're playing with your budgie just lock the cat away. When the budgie is safe in the cage make sure the doors are securely shut so that the kitty can't get to the budgie. You'll have to introduce them slowly or else Tango could scare Pickle so badly that he has a heart attack or something nasty. I know people on other forums i go on have budgies and cats. One person's budgie bites the kitty on the nose through the cage bars!

Now, about sexing baby budgies. I'm sure i've covered this elsewhere but i'll put it here too. Young males will have translucent pink ceres with no white around the nostrils. Females will have bluey purple ceres with pretty obvious white rings around the nostrils:
http://i42.photobucket.com/albums/e346/blink_oz_mig/MirrorOz005Custom.jpg
Male

http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y17/Baby_Blinkie/BubbleAndJasper.jpg
Left-female, right-male

Thanks, Bea. Me and my mom neededto make sure we buy the right gender! I don't really know if Pickle wold really suit a girl. . . :dunno:

[Budgiekin]

I think Pickle suits both sexes. Boy or girl, Pickle would be an awesome name! :p

[Budgie_Birthday]

I think Pickle suits both sexes. Boy or girl, Pickle would be an awesome name! :p

Thanks. I need a a little encouragement to actually get me going sometimes. :budgie: ---Only ten days and I will have one!

[blueberrybuns]

Well, I am still unsure of Kiki's sex but I think that Kiki is a boy...talk about a name that does not fit the gender ;)

[Bea]

I went through a phase of getting genders wrong. So i have a male called Lilly, had a female called Jeremy! :p

[Amy]

Ooops big mistake Bea!
You spell Lily different to me, you say: Lilly and I say: Lily. Yours takes longer to write!
Very pretty birds, Bea.

[ETAHoffman]

Re: Covering your birds at night..... DO NOT use any cover that has threads the birds can pull. Like a towel. A good friend was bird sitting for me while I was on vacation a few years back and covered one cage with a large towel. One of the birds pulled some threads, created a loop, and promptly got entangled in the loop and hung himself.

I've found completely covering my cages to be the best. Especially if you have your cage in a room where any ambient light might get in. (Lights from passing cars, etc.) Granted, the birds might get frightened by noises but I've found the stray lights awaken them and frighten them more often.

Now, of course, I don't have that problem. I have my birds outside in a large aviary and have the area where they roost partially covered with dark material. I do cover my Quaker, Yma, who is inside, however. If you don't have one, go to a thrift store and try to pick up a dark bed sheet. I found a very dark brown one that works very well. My wife doesn't like it when I use one of the good dark blue or dark green ones we have. :-)

Tom

[Budgie_Birthday]

Thanks!

[~*Brittany*~]

I use old sheets as well. The darker the better. I found mine at a thrift store as well. A nice dark green one. :)

Im sorry to hear about your budgie Tom. *hugs*

[Amy]

Poor budgie that hung himself.

I use like a tlittle tableclothy thing.

[Budgie_Birthday]

One of my bugies chirped! I know that isn't a big thing for you guys, but it is for me! They have rarely chirped since they got here and they sound so sweet. Except when they do the ACK ACK thing. Except that only happened once. :budgie:

[Amy]

Good! I'm glad they're relaxing a bit more now!

[Budgie_Birthday]

Pickle is doing the ACK ACK thing again except much louder and many more times! Is this a sign of stress or do they just love annoying you? When should I let them out of their cage?

[Amy]

They are just annoying you!! Joking!

[Budgie_Birthday]

I am serious! This is a budgie questions forum and I was asking you. Is it a sign of anger? What is it? And at what time after I get them should I let them out of their cage?

[Amy]

Well they're just talking to eachother.

[Budgie_Birthday]

Alright then at what point should I let them out of their cage?

[Budgiekin]

When budgies do that AACK thing, I assume you are referring when they are squawking pretty loudly? Usually they do this when they are irritated with something. It doesn't necessarily mean they are stressed, in fact it might even be the opposite. It's like venting. (You know how people vent about a problem? Well, this behaviour is like the budige equivalent of venting). Something that I find really funny is when I bring out my budgie's little yellow bathtub. Without fail, Kiwi will squawk, squawk, squawk for several minutes! I'm not quite sure why he does that; maybe he wants to make sure HE gets the bathtub first? Maybe he doesn't like the colour yellow? It could be anything! And I don't have a budgie brain translator, so it will always just be one of those things that I will probably never completely understand!! :)

As far as letting your sweeties out of their cages, there are a few different thoughts on this. One thought is that it is a good idea to let them out as early as possible after coming home. This gets them used to it early and they will be more likely to come out of their cage. So, rather than being afraid to venture to the "outside" because of spending all of their time in their cage, they actually develop a liking for and curiosity about coming out for playtime.

Another thought is that you should wait until they have been perch trainined inside their cage before letting them out. The theory here is that your budgie will be much more cooperative with you when they do come out of their cages.

It is up to you to figure out what you think would work best for your sweeties. I don't really think you can go wrong either way.

Let us know how it goes! We'd love to hear how the training and "outside playtime" is going. :)

[Budgie_Birthday]

Well thats what I have the Perch Training and Outings thread for. But I'll keep you posted there!

[Amy]

Let your budgies out whenever you feel like it! I hope they enjoy it!

[ETAHoffman]

Tips, obvious ones, on letting your birds out..... Be sure any ceiling fans are off. Be sure the toilet seat is down. If you have vertical shades on your windows, be sure they are closed or nearly closed. (Your bird may think the window is an open one to fly out.) Mirrors, if large, also present a problem.

Until your bird fully understands the boundries of your house, he may become confused by mirrors and windows. I forgot to close my verticals one day, a Quaker got out, and promptly flew INTO the window and broke his neck.

Plus, watch the house plants you have out. Budgies love to chew on plants/greens and many house plants are poisonous for birds.

I never take any of my birds out while my wife is cooking. I'd hate to think of one of them flying into the kitchen and falling into the soup pot!

So many things we have to watch to protect our little darlings.

[Budgiekin]

Those are excellent points ETAHoffman! We can all learn from what you have posted. There are many risks in our houses that we may not even have considered!

Put yourself in your budgie's feathers and try to think of what you would do or where you would go in the house. (In other words, Be Thy Budgie!) :p