Budgie

Budgies are a little bird with a very large heart.  These gregarious wee birds make the best pets for young and old.  A handfed budgie is the nicest pet going.  A parent raised budgie is too but the results from a handfed is instant.  

 

Budgies will eat almost anything you offer them.  Seed is their main diet but a budgie can certainly be switched to a pelleted formula of food with great patience.  I have added pellets to older "seed only eaters" with great success.  This did not happen over night but over a period of time.  Some even took up to three or four months.  Persistance and patience is the key. 

 

A budgie's talking ability is vast.  Not all budgies will talk.  A bird, any bird is either interested in human speech or it isn't.  Contrary to popular belief the female budgie will talk with equal enthusiam as a male budgie.  I have handfed many budgies and have had many reports back from customers that their bird is talking whether it is male or female.  "Hemsky", owned by Shea Long (one of our future veternarians), is a budgie I raised in the past year and Shea just emailed me to tell me Hemsky's vocabulary now consists of: "Pretty, Birdie, Budgie and Hi Cutie".  Shea also adds that Hemsky is "a very smart little girl", always entertaining.  Hemsky is only five and half months old. 

 

I could go on about the little bird I gave to my parents as a gift.... funny how the main topic of their aches and pains went to the wonders of R.B.'s adventures.  Their little bird talks in sentences and knows precisely what he is says.  Just this past summer I visited....  Up in the morning R.B is let out of his cage and heads directly into to wake up my Mom... "Going to have breakfast? Going to have juice?"  Then when he is all done his breakfast he flies to everyone and announces... "Mighty fine breakfast, eh?"  (Ya, he is a true Canadian, eh?)  I could go on and on about the adventures of R.B. but remember this.... "You only get out of your bird what you put into it!"