Basic Care of Budgerigars

Budgerigars are a lot of fun, but require more attention and special care than the more common household pets. This article covers the basics of pet bird care.

I will cover the following topics: Nutrition, Environment, Housing, Activity, General care, and Things to avoid.

Nutrition

As with any pet, the nutritional and quality aspects of the food you provide is extremely important for the well-being of your bird. A quality seed mix is essential, as is fresh vegetables daily. Apple slices, grated carrot, and chopped lettuces are among the favorites of many birds, helping to provide essential nutrition.

Environment

Since Budgerigars are native to Australia, it is essential their environment is not overlooked.

-Temperature
A healthy bird will be able to tolerate most temperatures that are comfortable to its owner. Avoid sudden changes in temperature, as this may cause discomfort and even sickness if extreme changes occur.

-Humidity
As with temperature, humidity is not a problem to most birds. A higher humidity can benefit your budgerigar, but is not essential.

-Light & Fresh Air
Fresh air and direct sunlight for at least part of the day is essential to the well-being of your budgerigar. Always be sure to provide ample shade, as excessive sunlight can cause your budgerigar to overheat.

Housing

-Cage
An oversized cage is a must. A large cage provides room for eating and play, which are so essential to a happy, healthy bird. The cage should be made of strong, non-toxic materials, designed for safety and easy cleaning. A cage which is wider than it is tall is best for budgerigars.

-Perches
“Variety is the spice of life” Variety in types of materials used and perch diameter. Provide various sized perches made of non-toxic woods. Never place perches over food and water dishes, as droppings may contaminate the food or water and cause bacteria to build which could make any bird sick. Also never use harsh sand perches or sandpaper perch covers, as this can lead to foot trouble.

-Food & Water Bowls
Wide bowls that latch to the side of the cage are best for your budgerigar. Deep dishes may cause wasted food as opened seed shells may hide seeds deeper which may never be eaten. Again, never place food or water dishes directly beneath perches to prevent contamination.

-Hygiene
Clean both the cage floor and food and water dishes daily to keep tabs on your budgerigar’s health and to prevent bacteria build-up. A deep-clean of the cage, dishes, perches and toys should be done weekly.

-Cage Liners
To line the bottom of the cage and to assist in the ease of cleaning, old newspaper or paper towels should be used. Never use corn-cob or other pelleted material, as a bird may choke on the small pieces.

-Security
Most birds, budgerigars included, need a ‘personal space’ to call their own where they can retreat to, sleep, and otherwise get some privacy. A good way to provide this is to hang or place inside the cage, near a perch, a small paper bag, hand towel or washcloth.

Activity

Your budgerigar, like all pet birds, needs to spend supervised time outside the cage. This provides an opportunity to exercise, take baths, play with toys and other forms of birdy entertainment.

-Toys
Toys are one of those indispensable aspects of your budgerigar’s existence. Providing a variety of toys provides your bird with entertainment, mental stimulation, and an outlet for that never-ending desire to chew. ‘Chewable’ items include wood branches, pine cones, natural ‘bird-safe’ ropes, wood blocks, and acrylic shapes.

General Care

Regular care of the beak, nails, feet and feathers is recommended. See your veterinarian for advice.

Things to Avoid

*Sandpaper perch covers.

*NEVER use non-stick cookware near a bird, the fumes travel quite a ways and can kill a bird within minutes.

*Mite sprays or boxes.

*Many houseplants are toxic to birds/parrots, a quick search online will provide ample resources.

*Never leave ceiling fans running while your bird is out of its cage.

*Cats, dogs, open water such as a toilet, sink or aquarium, and young children can also pose a threat.

Winter Bird Care – Getting Your Back Yard Birds Through Wintertime

Many factors combine to make the winter months tough ones for our feathered friends. Food can be hard to find, as there is less of it, and what there is may be covered by snow and ice. The bushes and plants are mostly dormant, and for those birds that normally feed on insect, these too are are often hibernating or dormant, and certainly not available to eat. All this combines to make it hard for the birds to find food. Compound this with the fact that as warm blooded creatures they need more energy to simply stay warm in the wintertime, and you can easily see that this can be a time of stress.

A great source of high calorie, or high energy food is suet. Suet is raw beef fat, typically taken the animal’s kidneys and loins. Because of its high fat content it is very high in energy. It is often combined with some other high energy foods like nuts to make it very attractive to a wide range of birds, such as nuthatches, woodpeckers, wrens, cardinals, bluebirds. On the flip side, it can also attract squirrels and some pest birds as well, such as starlings. One thing many people so is use a caged feeder to discourage the squirrels from poaching the suet. Another thing to try with starlings is a suet feeder that only has a cage opening on the bottom, as they will not usually feed that way but many other birds will.

Suet usually goes through a process called rendering, which gives it the lard like appearance and an almost waxy like texture. It is usually shaped like a small block, similar in size and shape to a simple sandwich. It can be mounted in a feeder that simply hangs it on a tree, in cages that can be hung from tree branches, or there are some hopper type feeders that hold bird seed in the hopper, and have suet cages on the side, which can serve to feed several types of birds at one time.

Another popular approach is to use suet ball, which often have a string so they can simply be hung from tree branches. To keep pests away, one favorite trick is to flavor the suet with pepper. The pepper will discourage mammals like squirrel, but the birds are unaffected by the pepper.

The winter months also make it tough to keep water available to your outdoor wildlife. The cooler temperatures work quickly on devices like bird feeders since they are designed to be shallow, which means they will freeze up fairly fast. One way to deal with this is to buy a heated bird bath. But if you already have a favorite bird bath, another simple solution is to use a bird bath heater. This are simple coils, usually powered off the household current, and will have a thermostat built in so they will keep the water at a reasonable temperature will thawing it nicely for the birds to use.
Just a few simple ideas like this will help keep your local bird population healthy and ready to sing when the spring thaw eventually comes.

Basic Pet Bird Care

Birds kept as pets should have the proper treatment for it to live healthy. Lots of things are to be considered upon deciding to have birds as pets. Choosing the right type of bird for you is crucial and the type of environment you ought to build for the animal is also important. Pet birds are almost always kept in cages.The owner must make sure that the cage is not too small for the bird/s and accessories must be present for feeding and recreational purposes.

The first thing to consider about caring for birds would be its proper nutrition. In the wild, birds feed on nectar, insects, leaves and other available food that is fit for their kind. Birds in cages should be fed with a balance of commercial and natural diet. Bird seeds are most ideal for supplement and intake. Water is also important.

Bird cages should be placed in areas where the distribution of sunlight, fresh air and humidity is equal. An owner must also make sure that there is enough shade for the bird to rest. Sudden change of temperature may harm the bird since it needs to adapt before it can be considered to be ready for transfer.

It is recommended that the largest cage that can be accommodated by the house should be chosen. The cage must be durable enough to tolerate damage which will be done by the bird. It should not have toxic components because the bird will be sure to gnaw on the rails. The cage, if possible should be wider than higher to promote wing stretching.
Perches should also be pesticide free. Commercial perches made of wood are ideal. A perch’s main function is to keep the bird away from their droppings, their tails from the water and other hygiene related issues to keep the bird healthy.

Food bowls should be wide and shallow rather than the deep and small cups. This type of food container makes the bird see what it will be eating and there are greater chances of it being attracted to the sight of food which may be beneficial to its health.

Newspapers, paper towels and plain cage liners should be used rather than wood chips or sand so that the droppings will be seen for monitoring and health purposes. A screen should separate the bird from the liners to prevent it from contamination. Daily cleaning routine of the bird cage and its accessories should be done to avoid food spoilage and disease.

Birds are intelligent animals. Their psychology needs an active attention. Therefore it would be advisable for the cage to be placed near family activity areas. Toys are also encouraged to promote play. One thing to be cautious about selecting bird toys is that the materials should be chewable to avoid choking.

Choosing a Pet bird, Proper Bird Care and right Bird Cages

Many of us might have noticed that birds are most active in the morning and evenings. They are either searching for or eating food, or are talking to each other. There daily routine is very similar to that of humans and other creatures, and that’s precisely the reason why birds are very popular as pets. Since most of us are living in urban areas, we have lost touch with nature and animals, unlike our forefathers who had a very strong connection with nature.

Parrots:

Excellent as Pets Parrots have always been excellent as pets since they are loving and affectionate by their very nature. They are also capable of imitating our speech, which attracts humans towards them even more. The pet birds and bird cages industry has been comprehensively changed due to hand rearing techniques, thus making the local pet bird supplier a very good source of knowledge during the process of change of pet bird ownership.

If you are looking to buy peach faces, canaries and budgerigars, pet shops are an extremely good place to go to, and be equally selective while buying bird cages. If you want hand reared pet birds, you should go to specialized bird shops. Make sure that you select only clean shops having healthy birds, and which come with a squeaky clean reputation.

Hand Reared Birds are Excellent Pets

Hand reared Parrots have proved to be extremely good pets. Larger birds create more noise and are more demanding compared to smaller birds. At the same time, they are more talkative and become better life long pets. Intelligent, Quiet and Don’t Bite Most people like birds, which are intelligent, quiet, and don’t bite. Just make sure you provide them with lot of space in bird cages.

The popular pet birds include Grass Parrot, King Parrot, Regent, Princes Parrot, Kakariki and Budgerigar among others. Specialized bird shops will provide you with most varieties of pet birds and bird cages. Budgies as Pets If you are more than six years of age, you would love a Budgie as a pet bird, because they are superb as talkers and may turn out to be life long companions.

If you have selected a young weaned Budgie, you will find they are easier to tame. A young Budgie can be easily identified due to the presence of black horizontal lines on their body from forehead towards the beak. There are no such horizontal bars in the older Budgerigars.

Male Budgies are more popular as pets. But, when they are young, it is difficult to find out their sex. If the bird shop owner or staff is experienced, he or she will be able to choose the right male Budgie and right bird cages for the pets.

Cockatiel:

Friendly and Relaxed Cockatiels are also very popular as pet birds amongst youngsters. It is well renowned for its friendly and relaxed nature. It can start imitating speech very quickly. Again you need to select a young male bird. Male cockatiels can be easily identified due to their orange cheek patch. The tail patterns of male and female birds are different, so we can easily distinguish between the two. A female Cockatiel is not a popular pet bird due to egg laying activity and egg binding. You need to take great care till a young Cockatiel starts eating independently. These birds are known to be healthy, but they still require a regular health plan and spacious bird cages. Shop and buy a small, medium, or large bird cages for you pet parrots and other pet birds. All types and sizes of parrot and bird cages are available for your pet birds.

Please visit our site to view and buy appropriate bird cages for your pets – http://www.birdcagesrepublic.com/

Winter Bird Care – Help Your Backyard Birds Through the Winter

One of the harshest facts about the winter months, especially in the northern states, is that many factors combine to make it hard for birds to find food.  First, there is just less of it.  Plants that many birds might feed on, such as berries, have just stopped producing in many areas, and those birds that like to feed on the insect population will find that there it has pretty much disappeared, either dying out or hibernating during the cold months.  So finding a good source of food is a challenge.

The other thing to keep in mind is that because birds are warm blooded, and wintertime is so much colder, they need a very high source of energy to keep warm enough to survive.  Much of the bird seed available these days doesn’t really provide much in the way of calories or energy.  That’s why suet feeders are a favorite for winter time bird feeders.

Suet is raw beef fat, typically taken from around the kidneys and loins. Because of its high fat content it is very high in energy.  Suet is one of the best foods to attract nuthatches, woodpeckers, wrens, titmice, chickadees, thrashers, cardinals, bluebirds and many other types of birds.  And, as usual with bird feeders, it can attract some less desirable wildlife like starlings and squirrels.  So, if these are a problem, you may want to use a suet feeder with a cage, and for starlings try a feeder covered on all sides but the bottom, which will feed many other birds but discourage starlings.

Depending on the type of suet you use, it can start to melt and go rancid at temperatures above 70 degrees F, so take care to empty after the spring thaw.

Another thing to keep in mind is the wintertime need for water.  Obviously, with freezing temperatures, the availability of water outdoors will drop, and a typical bird bath will freeze over fairly quickly since they are designed to be shallow.

There are many heated bird baths, but probably the easiest way to solve this problem is to add a bird bath heater to your existing bath.  Make sure that the bird bath is made from a material that can take the heat, some resins may melt.  Also be sure that the heater has a thermostat so it won’t overheat the water as well.

With a few simple steps like this, you can make sure that the birds in your yard are going to make it through the winter.

Pet Bird Care Basics

No matter what kind of bird you have as a pet, there are a lot of important things that most people overlook when it comes to their care. Proper pet bird care is something that every bird owner needs to be educated about.

One of the most basic, yet important things to know is that the size of the bird, determines the size of the cage. Some people buy cages that are actually too small for the bird they have, either because they are just cheaper, or they do not have room for a larger cage. Keeping a pet bird in a cage that’s too small, is detrimental to a birds health. Birds are easily stressed when caged, and a cage that is too small will certainly intensify the stress level. Obtain a cage that the bird can move around in, and perhaps by able to actually spread its wings to allow for exercise. Anything larger is a plus, and your bird will be very happy about it.

There have been many cases of a bird owner waking up one morning, only to find his bird dead for no apparent reason. The fact of the matter is, that the bird had more than likely been sick for quite sometime and the owner just didn’t notice it. Unless you keep a close eye on your bird, and know what to look for as far as the signs and symptoms of illness, it could easily go unnoticed. Birds have a way of hiding illness, and often times, by the time you start to see the signs of something being wrong, it’s too late.

Pet birds aren’t for everyone, and if you don’t plan on getting a guide book on caring for birds, or educating yourself about birds, it’s probably best not to get one. Birds are very delicate animals, both mentally and physically, and they demand proper care around the clock to be happy and healthy.