What do budgies eat

SO WHAT DO THEY EAT? THIS IS ONLY BASIC INFORMATION FROM RESERCH I HAVE DONE AND LEARNED FROM OTHER BIRD OWNERS.

Budgies are omnivores. This means they can digest both vegetables and insects. In their natural habitat in Australia, they have a varied diet of grass seeds, leafs, insects and so on. They sometimes fly miles and miles to feed themselves. Of course, for a domesticated bird, this isn't an option. But still it's important to keep them fit and healthy, while still staying as close as possible to their natural diet. A tamed budgie, much like its counterpart in the wild, is very curious and will try anything it's offered. Therefore, it's up to you, the owner, to offer the little bird a healthy and balanced meal.

hear Is Bella enjoying a scrummy fly :)

Note: Budgies eat insects and so qualify as omnivores, but do not offer them a steak or other slice of meat. They cannot digest this. The same goes for milk.

1. The Basics

Seeds or Pellets?
Like all birds, budgies love to eat seeds. As this is absolutely necessary in their diet, a good and quality mixture of living seeds is crucial.
Often the budgie will choose the fattest seeds as the yummiest, and so the healthiest seeds are left behind! If this is the case with you, don't refill the bowl until it's almost completely empty. Don't be fooled though: the empty husks of the seeds are often dropped into the bowl, so take a good look to make sure there's still something edible in there.
An alternative would be to limit the access to the food to set hours in the morning and evening. In the beginning, this will take some adjusting from your budgie, but soon he'll learn to adapt and eat as much of the food as possible, as he's learned it's not freely available. This will result in all seeds being devoured, not just the tastiest.
You could also choose to offer your budgie pellets. These are about the size of seeds, composed of compressed seeds and fruit. This is often the most complete food you will be able to give the bird, and it's also not able to select the tastiest seeds. However, not all budgies like to eat pellets. There is usually a schedule on the package to convert your budgie, but keep in mind that some birds never make the switch. Of course, you still need to provide fresh drinking water, grit and fruit&vegetables to your bird.

Fruits & Vegetables

A healthy addition to any bird diet, fruits and vegetables help ensure long and healthy lives. Give your budgie a piece every day, preferably as fresh as possible.
Every budgie has its own favourites and will need some time to get used to this new form of food. Offering a piece every day at the same place in the cage will help the bird identify it as food, rather than a toy to tear apart. Being the curious little thing that it is, eventually the bird will take a nibble and so be introduced to the wonderful flavour's of fruit or vegetables. Of course, it's always possible they just really don't like the taste of what you offered, so try to put some variation in what you offer. It will help if the bird sees you or its own kind enjoying the healthy snack, This will again stimulate their curiosity and will teach them it's a delicious form of food.
Many budgies prefer the taste of apples, carrots, or oranges. Bananas, pears, lettuce, ... all are loved. Do not offer too much lettuce though, as that might cause diarrhoea.

Hear they are enjoying some mango

Bella & Bert love a verity of fruit and veg, I would say their favourites are:

Broccoli

Kale

Boiled egg

Mango

Cucumber

Carrots

Red pepper

Mixed berries

Apple (seedless)

There is still more fruit and veg I want to try with them.

Warning! Rhubarb and avocado are poisonous to budgies! Avoid the cabbage family.

Eggfood

While many bird owners only offer this at times when the bird is breeding or growing new feathers, it's not a bad idea to provide eggfood at least once a week. It's packed with minerals and nutrients. To offer a complete and balanced diet, eggfood really should be on the menu.
Eggfood is healthy, easy to digest and delicious. It not only strengthens the bones (a calcium bomb), it gives extra strength and vitality and stimulates growth. It's an excellent dish to serve a mother budgie and her youngsters.

hear is Bella enjoying hard boiled egg with egg shell with carrots and broccoli

Eggfood, while very good for your budgie, contains a lot of fat. Twice a week at most when not breeding or sick really is enough. However, when your birds are sick or breeding, always have eggfood readily available. Put the dry eggfood in a feeding bowl, add some water to moisturize it, stir and offer. It's not supposed to float, just a bit of water is plenty. Don't leave it in the cage for too long as it will quickly grow a lot of bacteria and spoil.

EGG BISCUITS
Egg Biscuits are highly nutritious and extremely tasty complementary pet food for all cage and aviary birds.
Egg Biscuits are highly recommended during moulting and breeding periods.

Bella & Bert where terrified of these to being with which is a normal reaction to be wiry of new things, after a while they became use to it and now love egg biscuit.

*no birds are harmed in the making of egg biscuits*  

2. What Else?
Millet

A veritable delight to any budgie's taste buds. Almost without exception, budgies are extremely fond of this treat, and it's the ultimate assistant when trying to tame a new bird. It's also easy to digest! Thus millet is also often used to teach a young budgie to eat seeds, or to encourage a sick budgie to eat a bit.
Millet is high in fats and should only be offered once a week, at a quantity of half a string per bird. While millet is no replacement for a good seed mixture, it is to be preferred over candy sticks for birds.

Bella & Bert enjoying their treat

Candy sticks

Who doesn't know them: the seeds glued together with honey in the form of a long stick. Budgies love them. Naturally: it tastes very sweet! Almost every store has it on offer. It's yummy and very popular. However, there is a lot of sugar in candy sticks, so don't offer it too often. It should be more of an exception rather than a frequent snack.

3. What Definitely Not To Feed A Budgie

Some things, a budgie really cannot eat, ever. Either it's really unhealthy or hard to digest, or it's just plain poison!
Although sometimes it can be very tempting, it's best not to allow your budgie to eat food that's on your plate. People food tends to be very bad for the tiny kidneys of a budgerigar, and is often simply poisonous. Avoid salt (bad for kidneys) and sugar (causes infections, obesity and a whole host of problems).
Absolutely forbidden because it's lethal to a budgie: avocado, tobacco, rhubarb, chocolate, coffee, cola *anything fizzy a No No* and alcohol.
Disinfectants also contains alcohol: avoid using!

*tobacco and alcohol I cant see anyone being stupid enough to give this to their bird, but in this day in age noting  surprises me *

4. How Much Do They Need?

If you only have 1 budgie, buy smaller bags to ensure the seeds are still fresh when you offer them to the bird. The nutrients are at their peak, and there's a smaller chance of bacteria or funghi being in it. A normal budgie needs about 2 overflowing tablespoons of seeds per day.
If you have multiple budgies, always have some extra bags ready. You'll be all out before you know it! Keep an eye on the date label on the package.

5. Conclusion

Budgies can eat a lot, but not everything. Quality and freshness should be valued over price: it can determine how long your budgie will live, and in what condition it will spend its life. Avoid sugar and salt, and never ever feed them an item from the poisonous list. Your budgie will thank you, and reward you with a playful friend that has a long and healthy life.

BUDGIE SEXING

THIS HAS TO BE ONE OF MY FAVOURTIE TOPICS

BUDGIE SEXING!!

Most bird species are not sexually dimorph. This means that you can't tell what gender it is, simply by looking at it. Luckily, we're talking budgies here! Although it can be difficult for beginners and non-bird owners to tell the gender of a budgie, with a few simple tips, you'll be able to determine if your bird is a Tweeter or a Tweetine (Dear Lord, please don't actually use those names...!).

males:

so as your budgie starts to mature, After a couple of months, the budgie's cere will change colour, indicating that it's maturing (but not fertile yet!). So purple/pink turns to dark blue when it's a male.

But what about a female?

Females are the cause of the most confusion. People with male budgies seldom wind up really being unsure as to the gender. But females sometimes have blue in their ceres too YES BLUE!!, and that's mostly where the confusion sets in.

Females usually begin with a very light blue cere, sometimes it's almost white. If your bird is very young, you should be able to see very clear white rings around the nostrils. Not all hens have this though, so don't let that make or break your decision. As she ages, her cere will turn to a darker light blue. Sometimes she'll still have the white nostrils. Sometimes, her cere will turn a shade of pink. If she's feeling like breeding, it'll be brown and crusty. It could be beige. But it will never be dark blue!

IS IT A BOY OR A GIRL ?

In the picture above is my Bella, now your probably thinking hold on the bird has a blue cere!!

now this young lady has caused a rather stir on Instagram, with people clamming my bird is male, well she is 100% female, despite this people still feel the need to tell my bird is male.

 now Bella has a light blue cere with white around her nostrils and white border.

BELLA & BERT LKE TO WEAR MATCHING OUTFITS EVERYDAY ALL DAY :)

  

This hear is my Bert, hear you can see a lovely dark blue covering the whole of his cere with no hint of white,  handsome boy.

HOW TO TELL THE GENDER OF YOUR BUDGIE! I'm sharing @reggie_the_budgie post as there are still so many people getting it wrong ‼️

Please read: SEXING BUDGIES!! Many people out there are getting it completely wrong and subsequently making fools of themselves. You cannot always trust your pet shop/breeder!
The top two rows are male budgies; ranging from pink, to purple and through to royal blue. Males start pink and as they mature they turn purple and then blue. Notice they are all even in colour. BUT some males remain pink if they are a specific feather mutation, for example pieds and lutino's. But just remember PINK = BOY.

Bella is featured in this chart in the female section she is in the second row from the bottom, in the two middle ones.

The bottom two rows are all females; ranging from very light blue to brown. Females have light blue ceres with defined WHITE nostrils, sometimes displaying completely white/crème ceres. FEMALES CAN BE BLUE!!!!! The blue of a female is very very different to the blue of a male, it is paler, less evenly distributed and accompanied by white, so don't confuse the two! As females mature they turn brown and the ceres get lumpier. Notice that on the females there is no pink. Females will only be pink when they are very very young, and even then they tend to show the characteristic white around the nostrils. Some people are seeing very pale colourless ceres and confusing this with no gender - it's female! They won't suddenly become male.
Please stop making it difficult or thinking that pink is female and blue is male, budgies don't follow our gender stereotypes at all!

Disclaimer: obviously there are some budgies out there who don't want to follow the rules, but they are few and far between, and often poorly.

I would like to give credit to @reggie_the_budgie for this amazing information

 on sexing your budgie correctly, go check out their account too! 

The most telling of all...

If your budgie lays eggs, you can be pretty sure it's a female.

So To Summarize...

colour of cere

dark blue = male

any other colour = female

still in Doubt = probably female

WING CLIPPING!!!

Hear I want to speak about wing clipping.

should I clip my budgies wings?

Wing clipping could be labelled one of the most controversial subjects in aviculture. There are many reasons why some bird owners choose to clip their bird's wings, and just as many reasons why some bird owners do not. While wing clipping is generally recommended for most captive birds, the decision to trim a bird is one best left to the individual owner.

    
I am not being snooty when I say this because some of my friends do this and everyone has their own opinion. But I will give you pros and cons for both sides....

Clipped Winged Budgies

Pros:
Cannot Fly Around Uncontrollably (Pro or Con)

Cons:
Gives the bird no exercise
Gives the bird a higher risk of becoming severely injured due to thinking it CAN fly when it can't

Non-Clipped Winged Budgies~

Pros:
Can Give The Bird a Chance to escape danger
Let's the bird have its exercise
There is No Chance of Accidentally Cracking The Blood Vessel Wing

Cons:
Birds can Fly Around (Con or Pro)

My opinion:
Birds are birds! They should have the freedom to fly! I am a very opinionated person so of course I'm not forcing you to take my advice, but I am just making it clear.
Birds are meant to FLY! Why take that wonderful privileged away from a poor fellow?

To Answer Your Question:
Clipping your budgies' wings will NOT help training.
If the bird keeps trying to fly around when you are trying to teach it to "step up" or some other training method , then that is NORMAL!
At that point EVERYONE THINKS THEY SHOULD CLIP THEIR BIRDS WINGS. But the few people who truly do it either crack their poor birdie's blood vessel wing or just don't enjoy having a nonflying bird around.

So my opinion? DO NOT NOT NOT NOT NOT clip the budgie's wings , EVER! Please!!

I would like to address that Bella and Bert have bin clipped this was done with out me knowing, I was devastated that this had happened to them, their wings are now growing back in nicely and will stay this way.  

nothing more heart breaking than seeing your birds like this, especially when someone goes behind your back and clip their wings. 

Another reason that many pet birds have their wings clipped is because it forces the bird to be more dependent on its owner. Many believe that this can serve to enhance the bird/human bond, although there are countless flighted pet birds that enjoy close relationships with their human families.

personally I think wing clipping is totally wrong and is never something I would do to my birds.

Be very careful when clipping, not to trim a blood feather, a feather that is still growing and receiving a blood supply from the body. You can recognize a blood feather by the blood in the shaft. If cut they will bleed and can become an emergency situation.

IF YOU CONSIDER CLIPPING WINGS!!

Your vet will clip your bird's wings. If you wish to learn how to do it yourself, then ask your vet or an experienced person to show you how.

I've seen to many images, especially on Instagram where owners have clipped birds wings their self's, and they look like they have bin butchered its not a great look, so please if you wish to clip then I advise you see a professional.  

PLEASE DO NOT DO THIS YOUR SELF!!

budgie baths

Budgie baths.

How often should a budgie take a bath ? This is one to the questions each bird owner one day will try to find an answer for. But in fact, there is no universally valid reply to this question. Every budgie is different in its needs and preferences, and in fact budgies who are kept as pet birds don't need to clean their plumage with water to keep it in a good condition, Perhaps your budgie likes the traditional way of bathing in a plastic bird bath that can be hung into the cage opening. Or maybe your bird doesn't like to take a bath at all. It's your turn to find out what your little friend really wants. And you should know that there are several kinds of ways for taking a bath for a bird like a budgie.

Please bear in mind some birds don't bath for up to a year, so don't worry if they won't bath, you can introduce them slowly but never ever force it upon them, veggie baths are a big hit with Bella & Bert especially a kale bath, it's very amusing to watch, Bert loves to be sprayed too not so much Bella as she just dose a runner every time.

Some of our feathers friends love to roll themselves through wet lettuce leaves or herbs such as basil or parsley. The birds make somersaults and you will find them weirdly wrenched from time to time during the "bath". Wet tufts are great fun for many budgies as well. In their natural habitat, in the morning the birds move through tufts that are still wet from dew. This is how most wild budgies take a bath .

Hear is Bella & Bert enjoying a kale Bath.

 Next, you can see a budgie who loves to share their bath with his human friend. Rocker perched on the plastic bird bath and wanted his owner to splash. He then fluffed up his feathers and started to take his very special "shower". In the photo, his friend Eddie is sceptically watching this scene.

Now let's tell the whole truth: There is a huge disadvantage for you if your bird likes to take a bath in a big bowl or something similar in your living room: Your budgies won't even waste a single thought about what else will be wet after they have finished their wild "pool party". But hay who cares it's fun to see your little friend having a great time, an enthusiastic bath can just seem like the famous ballet "Swan Lake".


 bath beneath a running water tap seems to be heaven to some birds. Tame budgies sit on their keeper's hand and splash under the soft  water jet. In this case, a bird will also not give a hoot about anything getting wet around him. You will surely be hit by a lot of splashes while your bird is floundering about in the water. Please make sure that the water jet is not too strong, and that the temperature is moderate. And keep in mind that birds don't like you move too much, some birds get nervous then.

Last but not least I would like to introduce the "raindrop-method" to you. My Bert is really crazy about taking a shower like that. I take a bottle that is normally used for spraying water on plants (a mist sprayer). It is necessary to make sure that there are big drops coming out of it. If one produces fine mist, the birds breathe in the tiny drops and sneeze very often, which they really don't like at all as you can imagine. By producing bigger drops, you just make it rain for your birds. In a bath room, it does not matter how wild the budgies flap with their wings during showering. My little Bert  loves those showers and he does not stop splashing before he is dripping wet.