What sex are my budgies?

I have four budgies. Apparently two female and two Male.
But what do you think?


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ChocolateChipCookiez said:

Not quite sure but the first and third pic looks like 2 males. The second and fourth pic looks like females.​

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Thanks! [emoji120]


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I'm not so sure about that 3rd pic... right around the nares(nostrils) looks like whiteish rings, and the blue isn't a deep deep blue. Hmm. I vote #1 is a boy. #'s 2 and 4 are girls. 3 could go either way, but I am sort of leaning girl, could you post another photo of that one?

The first pic is a male (not enough of a white-ring around each nostril to be a female)..

The other 3 pics are all females...The second one is obviously female (her Cere is either white/cream or light tan/brown, I can't really tell from the lighting, but it's definitely not the "solid pink" that it needs to be a male, if that's what people are thinking), as is the fourth (and she is in breeding-season as well)...The third one is definitely a female as well, as you can see the difference between what I meant when I said that the first pic is a male because there isn't enough, distinct white-ring around each nostril to be a female, however in the third pic you can see the bright-white rings around each nostril that are clearly-separate from the nostrils, and that's a classic female...

So you actually have 3 females and 1 male...

bug_n_flock said:

I'm not so sure about that 3rd pic... right around the nares(nostrils) looks like whiteish rings, and the blue isn't a deep deep blue. Hmm. I vote #1 is a boy. #'s 2 and 4 are girls. 3 could go either way, but I am sort of leaning girl, could you post another photo of that one?

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Jobiness said:

bug_n_flock said:

I'm not so sure about that 3rd pic... right around the nares(nostrils) looks like whiteish rings, and the blue isn't a deep deep blue. Hmm. I vote #1 is a boy. #'s 2 and 4 are girls. 3 could go either way, but I am sort of leaning girl, could you post another photo of that one?

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****I'm assuming that you are purposely trying to breed your Budgies? If not, then you need to remove the Nest-Box immediately, because nothing will cause a female Budgie to lay infertile-eggs faster than a Nest-Box, and the same goes for getting Budgie to mate/breed, any small, dark places have to go.

****However, If you ARE TRYING TO PURPOSELY BREED YOUR BUDGIES, I HIGHLY SUGGEST YOU NOT DO IT THE WAY THAT YOU ARE TRYING TO BY HOUSING THEM ALL TOGETHER!!!

***What you are doing is called "Community-Breeding", meaning you are housing more than a single-pair of birds together in one cage/aviary, providing a Nest-Box or multiple Nest-Boxes, and trying to get the birds of the opposite-sex inside the cage/aviary to "pair-up", bond with each other, and then mate/breed and raise the babies inside one of the Nest-Boxes while you've got other birds who are not a part of the pair in the same cage/aviary, OR you've got multiple bonded-pairs of birds who are mating and raising chicks in multiple Nest-Boxes housed in the same cage/aviary together...Community-Breeding is an extremely common practice (whether done purposely or just by-accident with people who buy multiple birds of the same species and of opposite-genders and house them all together in a large cage or aviary, simply to be pets), and is especially common with both English and American Budgies, as well as other small-species of birds and parrots...And I cannot tell you how badly this ALWAYS ENDS-UP FOR PEOPLE WHO DO IT, WHETHER THEY ARE TRYING TO BREED A PAIR OR MULTIPLE-PAIRS INSIDE OF ONE CAGE/AVIARY OR NOT, IT ALWAYS ENDS VERY BADLY, PROBABLY 95%+ OF THE TIME!!!

Any number of situations will happen with the Community-Breeding/Housing of Budgies of the opposite sex, but the end-result is always the same: You are going to eventually, out of nowhere one day, find multiple dead and/or dying Budgies, and their chicks if they ever have any...And it's not pretty. At all. You typically find multiple dead adult birds laying on the bottom of the cage/aviary, literally ripped apart, and if their are chicks in a Nest-Box or multiple Nest-Boxes, you typically find them decapitated, wings and legs amputated, etc....I am not trying to be crude or offensive to you or anyone else, but others here can back me up on this, and I've found that in this particular situation where someone is fairly new to raising/owning multiple Budgies of opposite sexes (and sometimes of the same sex as well, don't think they are immune), and they are housing their new Budgies together in one large flight-cage or aviary all together, and then to make it worse they've got Nest-Boxes inside of their cage and are purposely trying to breed them in a Community-Breeding situation, they typically won't listen to us telling them what is going to eventually and inevitably happen to their Budgies one day, maybe soon and maybe later, but it always does happen...Typically new owners to Budgies who are housing them in a Community-Breeding situation say things to us like "My Budgies are all fine together, none of them have ever fought with each other", or "I have one bonded-pair in the cage and they love each other, are fine with each other, and the other non-bonded Budgies leave them alone and don't bother them at all", or "I haven't once seen any of the other Budgies go anywhere near the Nest-Box of the bonded-pair, they don't bother it at all"...Basically what we usually get is "MY BUDGIES are different. They're fine. They get along fine and I'm not going to separate them into their own cages because they are a Flock and they are all friends and love each other."...That's the general statement that is made...And then a week, 2 weeks, a month, 2 months, 6 months etc., sometime later (usually right around the time that chicks have been hatched for a few weeks) they make a new post here describing the horror that they walked-in to see inside of their Budgie's Community-Cage and inside of the Nest-Box or Nest-Boxes. So I'd rather say my peace now about it, inform you what is going to happen at some point, and let you do what you're going to do, but at least I'll have informed you about it....

****The last Community-Breeding situation we had that ended in horror and tragedy here on the forum was just a few months ago with a member of the forum who was well-loved and who had been around for quite some time...He was a great guy who had rescued a female Budgie from the bottom of a dumpster he found outside in his town somewhere, and she was in horrible shape, near death, and he did a magical job rehabbing her and turning her into the most gorgeous female Budgie you've ever seen...Then he rescued a couple more Budgies, males, and one of the males bonded with this female, so he put a Nest-Box inside of their large flight-cage where he had all of them living...His statement was "They are a family, and I am going to allow them to breed and then raise their chicks naturally, like a family raising them together does in the wild"...The problem is that they aren't in the wild, they are inside of a cage inside of a house...We warned him, explained what always happens in this situation, but he actually got quite upset and said that "His birds were a loving family and were all raising the chicks together"...Then one day he made a devastating post that was also his LAST POST...That was in February I believe, and he's not been back since at all. Not once. And he was a very active member...He first had a couple of chicks die from either illness or because the mother and father weren't feeding them, etc., one of the issues that often happens naturally with chicks in the wild, and this upset him a lot...But then one morning he found that one of the males had gone into the nest-box and had decapitated one of the remaining few chicks, and had also injured the female (which is what usually happens, the female usually dies because they are defending their babies of course)...And as someone who has seen this happen before I can tell you it's an awful sight to see...This poor member just could not understand how this could happen, as he couldn't see his birds as being birds, to him they were his family, and they were a family within his family inside of their shared-cage...And he just couldn't deal with it, and he said that he was going to re-home his adult birds and the chicks and be done with owning birds/parrots...We all tried to talk to him and repeat to him that this is just nature, it's what happens in nature on a regular basis, and just because they are captive-bred Budgies or parrots of any species, that doesn't mean that they are domesticated (which NO PARROTS are, non are domesticated at all, that takes hundreds and hundreds of years of ownerships and breeding in-captivity to happen)...I don't know if he just couldn't take that we told him to not house all of his Budgies together in the same cage/aviary if he was going to allow any of them to breed and/or allow any of the eggs to hatch and he just refused to listen to us and then what we said was going to happen did happen a few weeks after we had told him, or if he just couldn't take what he saw in that flight-cage and nest-box, but he vanished and never came back...And he's missed quite a lot...But he's only one recent example of many...

***So, what you should do immediately IF your female has already bonded-closely with one of your males and they are obviously always sitting together, always preening each other, feeding each other, etc. (or if they are already mating and spending time together inside of that Nest-Box or a Nest-Box, I don't know if you have more than 1 in there or not), then what you need to do is immediately move the bonded male/female pair into their own cage, and if you are intending to allow them to breed AND allow their eggs to hatch and them to raise their chicks, then you need to put a Nest-Box inside or attach it to the outside of a door of the cage you put the pair in, and then remove all other Nest-Boxes from the larger cage/aviary that the other 2 are inside of...I don't know if you only have 4 Budgies total, I hope so and there aren't even more inside of one large cage/aviary, but if so, then you need to do the same with each bonded, opposite-sex pair of Budgies if you are going to allow them to lay fertile eggs and then allow them to hatch...If you aren't planning on allowing any of the eggs to hatch, then you need to remove ALL of the Nest-Boxes, as they are ONLY meant to house fertile eggs while they develop, and then to house chicks that are being fed and raised by their parent birds. Nest-Boxes are not meant to house infertile eggs or fertile eggs that you know you are not going to allow to hatch....So bottom-line is that you should NEVER house a bonded, opposite-sex pair of Budgies or any other species of parrots inside of a cage with any other Budgies, instead, any bonded, opposite-sex pairs need to be housed together in their own cage alone, and with a Nest-Box ONLY if you know you are going to allow their eggs to hatch...And the other 2 Budgies can be housed together AS LONG as they are still getting along and not fighting...But there is no guarantee that any 2 birds are going to get along at all, or that they will continue to get along forever...So if you see 2 particular Budgies starting to always peck/bite at each other and fighting on a regular-basis, then you need to separate them into separate cages, because it will continue to escalate until they kill each other....Now if your female isn't closely--bonded with any of the males yet (you'll be able to tell, trust me), and none of them are fighting with each other, then you can continue to house them together UNTIL the female pairs-up with one of the males...The minute that happens, then the pair needs to be immediately moved into their own, separate cage...

DNA testing for birds is like 12 bucks, I spend more when I go though a drive through...

https://iqbirdtesting.com/ is the company I used. not sponsoring them but it went fine.

in the amount of time you asked and people answered a scientific DNA test would give you absolute certainty.

By the way, I forgot to mention that the new photos you posted of that 3rd Budgie actually may or may not change my mind about the sex of that particular Budgie...The first photos you posted made the white-rings around each nostril look much larger/clearer, but now that I look at these close-ups, that could go either way, it may be a female or it may be a male...When it comes to Budgies with a bright-blue Cere with white-rings around each nostril, it's not only the most commonly made mistake when people try to sex their Budgies, simply because most people don't know anything about a female Budgie possibly having a bright-blue Cere at all, but it's also sometimes a situation where you just can't visually sex them 100%,...And this is one of those situations....


So if you really want to know, I suggest having a DNA-test done on that Budgie only, as the other 3 are very clearly 2 males and 1 female (the dark-brown Cere, she's also in breeding-season, that's why her Cere turned to that dark, chocolate brown color, and also why it became thicker and crusty, almost like it's scabby)...When she comes out of breeding-season her Cere will turn back to it's original color, either white, cream, tan, brown, or blue with white-rings around each nostril, and it will also lose it's thickness and it's crustiness again....But that 3rd Budgie who has the blue Cere with the white-rings around each nostril could go either way; on one-hand there are clearly white-rings around each nostril on the blue-Cere, which makes it a female, but on the other-hand the white-rings are not equal going all the way around each nostril, but are more of just some white shading around each nostril, so that's why I'm not sure...You can have a DNA-test done on a few freshly-plucked feathers from your bird's chest that you mail in to a lab who does Avian DNA-testing on feathers, and it usually only costs between $20-$30 total if you do it this way on your own, without involving a Veterinarian...There are several labs online who you can order a Feather DNA Test-Kit from; you order and pay for the test online and they'll send you the test-kit with very detailed instructions on how to do it. Once you receive the test-kit in the mail you simply pluck a few fresh feathers from your bird's chest area, put them into the baggie they provide you, and then you just mail them back in the envelope they provide you...And in a couple of weeks you'll get your results. (YOU CANNOT SEND FEATHERS YOU FIND IN THEIR CAGE OR THAT HAVE FALLEN-OUT ON THEIR OWN, THEY MUST BE FEATHERS THAT HAVE BEEN "PLUCKED" FROM YOUR BIRD, AND PLUCKED RECENTLY FOR THEIR TO BE ENOUGH USABLE DNA-MATERIAL ON THE ENDS TO TEST)...The most widely-used lab for Feather-DNA Tests is called "AvianBiotech", I've used them many times, as have many other breeders on this forum. They're cheap, quick, and accurate...Just do a Google-search for "AvianBiotech Feather DNA Test"....