Parakeet perch needs – best perches for budgies

Your parakeet may spend the bulk of his time at home in his cage so it’s important that it’s comfortable and entertaining – perches are a big part of cage design and budgie happiness. Health-wise, your budgie also needs a variety of perches in different sizes to keep his feet limber and also different materials, some for rest and some for keeping his nails and beak trimmed, and others to fill in his nutritional needs. When you start trying to balance all of these needs against the amount of room available in your cage it becomes apparent that a. bigger is better for cage size and b. rotating perches is key to keep your budgies needs met without over-crowding the cage. It’s important to have some of the best perches for budgies.

Most bird cages come with a single smooth dowel-type perch that runs the length of the cage, we keep ours in but it’s important that it’s the only smooth, round perch in the cage, as they don’t provide enough foot exercise or any other stimulation. A bird who has only doweled perches will probably find himself with atrophied and painful feet.

Here are some examples of important kinds of perches to invest in for your parakeet’s health and well-being.

Mac’s Creations Small Manzanita Perch – although these can also be smooth they have a variety of widths in one perch which is great for parakeet foot-limbering. My budgies also enjoy chewing on the narrow ends and climbing from one branch to another. You can find suitable branches outdoors and use them as perches; however you must be careful to do research beforehand on which trees are safe for your birds. You also have to take special care to clean branches you bring in. I’ve looked into the process and it just feels safer and like a lot less work to purchase a natural perch that I know is approved for parakeet use.

Living World Pedi-Perch, Small – these perches have a rough texture and varying widths as well. They are good for general variety, and they also help your budgie keep his nails trim and his beak ground down and polished. Parakeet’s nails and beaks keep growing all the time and it’s important for them to have hard surfaces to keep them maintained. You can avoid having to trim your parakeet’s nails yourself or having it done professionally if you provide these sorts of perches.

Polly’s Cuttlebone Calcium Bird Perch, Small – I love these, they not only provide a rough surface for nails and beak, and also for exercising feet, but they are intended to be broken down and eaten over time. They provide calcium which parakeets need for overall health – similar to the way calcium helps humans keep their bones strong; it helps parakeets with beak, nail and feather strength. There is not always a ton of calcium in a typical parakeet diet, so supplementing is a big help. Calcium deficiency can also lead to night terrors.

Ecotrition Snak Shak Chewable Perch, Small (P-84006) – We have had this Snak Shack edible branch a couple of times, it’s made from 100% edible material such as alfalfa, honey and seeds, but it looks like a branch! The fact that it’s a perch, a chew toy, and also good for exercising the feet with different textures makes is a home run for us.

Booda Comfy Perch for Birds, Medium 32-Inch, Colors Vary – I’m fully obsessed with these, I recommend buying every size and using them in different applications, both inside the cage as well as on play gyms and hanging window perches. They are bendable and were a major help with both our parakeets when they first came home. Neither of them knew how to climb around on the bars of their cages and we used a long comfy perch to make the interior of the cage navigable for a parakeet who might otherwise be scared to hop, fly or climb. They are also hand washable and hold up to a lot of abuse. Parakeets will enjoy trying to pull them apart since they are woven fabric, so it’s important to keep a close eye out for dangerous loose threads and also to make sure they are not ingesting fabric and risking a crop impaction.

Polly’s Desert Sands Bird Perch, Small – This type of perch is really essential in my opinion, they comes in a wide range of shapes, sizes and colors, some have deep divots and some are smooth with less of a natural look, they are all useful. Right now we have a manufactured sand perch as well as the more natural looking Polly’s Dessert sands. These help with foot exercise again and well as keeping nails trimmed and beaks ground down and polished. The parakeets love sitting on one of these and just chewing away.

There are a lot of other types of perches, foraging, shredding, flat perches for resting and perches that are also toys, and since you have to rotate pretty frequently to reduce boredom there’s really no harm in storing up some extras (spoken like a true shopaholic).

One caveat is to watch out for the dimensions, with parakeets you will probably want to stick with perches that are marked as small or extra small, this is both so the length will be appropriate for you cage and also so the width is suitable for budgie feed. Specifically the width should be somewhere between 3/8″ to 3/4″ with a sweet spot of about 1/2″. Anything much more than 3/4″ will be too big for their comfort.