Budgies are clever, they will not breed unless they have the right facilities available to raise a successful brood of babies. That means that they need a nest box to be successful and as long as you do not provide them with a nest box, then they will not breed. It is always possible, although rare, for a female to lay an egg in the cage if she becomes hormonal, that is just an accident of nature, just remove it if this is the case, it should generally not happen again.

It is always better to buy two budgies rather than one, however, if you can only buy one then generally, make it a male as they tend to be slightly more outgoing and active which they will need to be, to be happy in a lone life situation.

With young budgies of up to 20 weeks old, you can buy two males, or one of each. Because they are young, you will not usually have any bonding issues. Our recommendation is always to buy one of each as it’s nice to see the romance between a male and a female, it’s just so cute! We generally advise against two females as they can get territorial later in life.

Be kind, give them a little rest. they have been removed from their community cage, inspected, wings trimmed, put in a box, driven home, put into a strange cage in a strange place, and strange faces are looking at them. Just give them a few hours to settle in and bond with each other, their cage and their surroundings before you attempt to bond with them. Start your bonding the next day if you have picked them up late in the day. If you picked them up early in the day, then have your first session with them later that same day.  It is important to start the bonding process as soon as possible, don’t leave it days before you intereact with them.

Beware of pet shop toys, the rope of some of these toys will be chewed and ingested and can lead to death. Pet shops know this and still continue to sell them and that is so shameful. Choose toys that move, they love swings, ladders, things they can show off their agility on. Plastic toys like the ones shown in our Cages & Accessories section are fine but don’t forget that they get just as much fun out of a small handful of hay or grass, small twigs, pine cones, branches with a few leaves etc. In other words, they love natural surroundings, so make your cage more like nature!

Avian science and nutritionists have discovered that the best diet for budgies is a fresh diet in addition to seed which is far better than a restricted diet or just seed. We recommend a ‘chop diet’ which includes vegetables, sprouts and salads to accompany the low fat seed (low fat is absolutely essential). A good chop diet may consist of any of the following, try and make it as mixed and varied as the seasons and prices allow…. This is our suggested chop food diet, just pick the items that you normally eat or that are in season, these should be uncooked and washed. Also please remember that the amount each budgie might eat is only 1-2 teaspoons, they cant eat a whole bowl full!

Broccoli – Cauliflower – Celery – Brussel Sprouts – Capsicum – Chilies (great nutritional value and the bird cannot feel the heat) – Squash – Spinach – Herbs – Sweet Potatoes – Carrots – Bird safe edible flowers – Mixed sprouted seeds – Mung beans – Small amount of non citrus fruit like apple once a week (budgies are not big fruit eaters) – Hard-boiled egg once every 7-10 days – Fresh hand cut grass

Seeds are important but, in moderation, although seed is easy when you are busy, seeds alone will leave the birds nutritionally deficient. You need to be careful, budgies in the wild tend to seek out Spinifex and wild millet grass and feast on those seeds. The thing with Spinifex and wild millet grass is that it has very low fat content. Most seeds you buy in a shop that are supposedly for budgies, are loaded with canary and finch seed which are high in fat because it is cheap. Although canaries and finches can tolerate that seed, budgies cannot and often fatty liver disease is the resulting problem and that is usually terminal!

Remember that seeds are nutritionally incomplete, lacking vitamins, minerals and protein, they should therefore only be a very small part of a budgieís diet and should never be the entire diet. Please realise that shop bought seed only diet is the same as feeding a child 6 burgers a day, be warned, it can be fatal and although it can be treated, it is expensive and could have been avoided with a balanced diet.

If you offer your bird  healthier options from the list of the ‘chop foods’ above, your bird will eventually start eating more of the properly balanced foods to give them a healthy diet.  No to a food item one day – does not mean no forever – KEEP TRYING! We sell specially mixed low fat seed for budgies that is three kinds of millet and is exceptionally low in fat. It is called Budgie Diet Mix and is the best seed you can buy and costs comparable with  shop bought high fat alternatives. We can post seed to you when needed if you do not live close enough to us to collect.

What size house is good for humans? This is a difficult question to answer and it will largely depend if the budgies are going to be in or out of the cage for long periods. Golden rule for cages, the perch length should never be less that 60cm. A minimum size cage for 2 budgies is say 60 x 40 x 40cm and for 2-4 budgies then say 76 x 44 x 44cm and for 4 or more then a larger cage with a stand is useful say 144 x 61 x 42cm – You will notice that the cages we sell all have a flat top, that is because you can then sit a playground on top so that the budgies have a base while they are out of the cage which budgies love. All of these cages, playgrounds, toys and more are shown in our Cages & Accessories section on this website and there are some amazing bargains for a cage and budgies combined purchase. Check it out!

If you buy a budgie that has not been tamed then you may have more work to do than you think. We start hand training our baby budgies from a very young age, while they are still in the nest box at about 2-3 weeks old. It therefore goes without saying that if you buy an untamed budgie from another source, it has missed out on all of that training at the younger age and being ‘untamed’ would have become instinctive to the bird. After we have hand tamed a budgie, we can put it back into a cage and not handle it for some time, when we take it out, the hand taming kicks in within minutes because it has become instinctive to the bird. In short, you pay a little more for your budgie to be hand tamed, but it is well worth the investment, especially when you consider the pleasure your feathered friend will give you over the years.