Feeding Advice for a ravenous Budgie.

Spacey'sMom

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Aug 24, 2022
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2 Budgies!
Hello all,

I've posted a time or two about our first budgie Teerie and after some debate and consideration we finally took the plunge and got our second budgie last weekend who we named Yvie. Yvie is... An entirely different bird lol. She(gender doesn't really matter outside of health concerns) is an incredibly active, social, and fluffy little thing.

Mission semi accomplished in getting her as Teerie seems to be much more engaged and interested in her surroundings. She's quickly learned how to effectively clean her beak from Yvie and has been Preening much more often.

My main concern/question is about Yvie's insatiable hunger. She is much bigger and is Heavier than Teerie. We have determined that Teerie was a young adult due to her behavior and size. The vets she has seen agreed she appears pretty young. Yvie is definitely an adult, I'm not nearly knowledgeable enough to guess how old. But compared to Teerie she is CONSTANTLY looking for food and eating. To the point of flying to the ground (I use the term fly loosely as whoever clipped her wings butchered them) and pecking at every speck and spot she sees.

Our floors are older wood and the upstairs is painted wood. I'm worried about her eating something dangerous for her.

We have been feeding them a home made chop with lentils, quinoa, carrots, apples, blueberries, strawberries, bananas, broccoli, cauliflower, kale, and some herbs such at Parsley just to make some of the things in it. We also feed a pellet called Nutrisoft? (Don't have the bag anymore) we ground the pellets down with a seed mix, oatmeal, and freeze dried fruit. Probably about 80% pellet 10% seed and 10% Freeze dried fruit. I also feed something new and fun when I can this week I have alfalfa sprouts and ground fresh carrots with some coconut flakes mixed in. I take these wet ingredients and mix in the dry elements. Lots of variety for my Birbs :) So dubbed Birbie Girls by my husband who sang them the altered lyrics to Barbie Girl.

Even with food still in her bowl she keeps looking for more. When in their cage she constantly digs through the dry mix for more. When ai bring them out to their tree playground she will have lost of the wet and dry mix to dig through but she chooses to jump down ungracefully and peck at anything and everything she can find. Teerie eats then picks a place where she is content. Up to this point I have them out with me from about 9 until 7or 8 in the as I work from home. With her leaping down and getting in to things I had to put her back in her cage which makes me very sad :/. We have plans to build them a little playground that will be safer when I can't watch them like a hawk(mostly Yvie) but is this normal behavior? And how much should she be eating?

She will have more left in the bowl and still jumps down to poke around. Also yes I have gone through and trimmed all the loose ends. Teerie(green) never messed with them but Yvie(blue) I don't trust to leave it alone X.x

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Thanks!
 
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Spacey'sMom

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Aug 24, 2022
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2 Budgies!
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Some pictures of what the food looks like.
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Spoon for size reference. I've been doing 2 of the dry components and 2 of the wet with a pinch of sprouts. And one spoon of dry in the cage when I put them to bed. These are very small spoons.
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zERo

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Hmm, she's likely looking for more seed once she eats all the seed out of the dry mix.
So they have food available at all times? I keep pellets in all my birds cages 24/7 including the budgies, just in case, they love them luckily.
You chop sounds great though, if it were me, I'd not add banana, strawberry, or apples into a daily food due to the sugar and then I'd up the veg variety.
Yvie sounds like my boy Striga a bit, he flies to the ground looking for food, hoping for some stray millet or other seed that may have fell.
 

HeatherG

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Apr 25, 2020
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I am wondering if you have more than one feeding station? If I have more than one bird I have more than one feeder and waterer because a bossy bird may not let others feed or water. Or someone may get sick and be kept away from food or water by aggressive flockmates.

I am impressed by your bird diets!
 
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Spacey'sMom

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Aug 24, 2022
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2 Budgies!
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We have 1 feeding dish in the tree and one in the cage but they frequently share. And Yvie usually does it when Teerie is asleep. I almost wonder if she's just bored? Is there a way to slow her down or make it more enriching for her? Like a feeding toy??

I have a sprig of Millet wrapped in brown confetti paper so they have to push it around and pull to get to the Millet. As well as those little plastic cat toys with bells in them? I have them hung with Millet shoved in there. If she's wanting to skitter around and poke at things maybe I could simulate that? Maybe a cooling rack?? So that she has to reach through but is still moving across a relatively flat surface?

Or I have chia and flax seeds. They get very sticky. Could I grind that up with the ground pellet mix and stick it to something? Paper towel or cardboard? A tray with dried grass covering the dry mix? So she has to shove it around to get to the food?

Also there's not much in the way of visible seeds in the mix and it all sticks to those wet ingredients.

She frequently hops down even when she has food in her bowl.
 

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Spacey'sMom

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Aug 24, 2022
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2 Budgies!
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Success!! I brought home some Hay from the horse barn and they seem to be loving the process! I put it in a small baking tray covered with aluminum foil (it doesn't have a non-stick coating and we've never used it for anything but decoration). They were skittering around searching for more of the dry mix. Hoping to put the cooling rack on top so they can't kick it around so easily but they appear to be very enthusiastic. Even choosing that over there normal bowl.
 

DonnaBudgie

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Success!! I brought home some Hay from the horse barn and they seem to be loving the process! I put it in a small baking tray covered with aluminum foil (it doesn't have a non-stick coating and we've never used it for anything but decoration). They were skittering around searching for more of the dry mix. Hoping to put the cooling rack on top so they can't kick it around so easily but they appear to be very enthusiastic. Even choosing that over there normal bowl.
Teerie and Yvie are gorgeous Budgies and you are feeding them an excellent diet! I'm not sure which one is which, and you say gender doesn't matter except for health concerns, but I'm almost 100% certain the pale yellow recessive pied Budgie is a male (the recessive pied male's cere remains pink/lavender for life) and the normal green one is a female, so you may very well have baby Budgies in your future! This can be a good thing but an egg laying female can become a compulsive layer or even egg bound which is often fatal in Budgies. For breeding to be successful you need to be prepared and provide your Budgies with a proper nest box and be prepared to intervene and hand feed the babies if the parents are unable to. I just recently successfully hand raised a baby budgie myself from an egg because the Mama had an emergency and couldn't care for her eggs. It was an amazing experience but certainly not something to undertake unless you know what you're doing and have easy access to an avian vet.
Whatever you do, don't rename your Budgies based on their real gender and by all means continue to call them your Birbie Girls!
 

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