Tag: kelly

Which sexes of budgies get along best

If I was starting fresh with zero parakeets right now, choosing which sex to get would be very easy. I would get two males, no question. A pair of males will almost always get along well, and I wouldn’t have to worry about anyone laying eggs and accompanying issues like becoming egg bound.

A male/female pairing might work, but the female could end up bullying the male and being overly territorial, and I really don’t want to breed parakeets. So, if they mated and began laying I would have to do stuff like steal eggs, boil them and return them to the cage so that they could have the experience of taking care of the eggs, without actually having baby parakeets.  I feel uncomfortable just thinking about doing that.  I know there’s no guarantee that would actually happen, and by not providing a nesting box and keeping daylight hours limited I could possibly avoid laying, but it’s just things I do not want to deal with as a budgie parent.

Female/female is what we have now, and it’s working out pretty well.  Despite the fact that many people will tell you two females is impossible and they will kill each other, Toby and Kelly hang out together all day, preen each other, flock call when they are separated and generally seem to enjoy each other’s company.

But, they are both territorial, so from dawn till dusk (or later!) we do have intermittent squabbles that are usually about food bowls or toys. The key to keeping these relatively civil is to have a big enough cage for everyone to have their sense of space, and also to duplicate the important stuff. We have two food dishes, two waters and two perches for sleeping at the top of the cage.  They’ve been living together for over 6 months now and no one has ever drawn blood, so I consider that a success.

So – two female budgies can live together in my experience, which is, of course, limited to these two budgies.  We did also discuss this with the Rensselaer Bird Center staff when we took Kelly home, and they stated that in all their many years of breeding and housing budgies, two females had only ever had to be separated one time.  Like many of these issues, I’m sure it comes down to the individual bird, but you can sway it towards the positive by providing optimal living conditions.

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awwwww

2021 update – I just realized I never came back to this post to update. Toby and Kelly did not end up living together permanently and had to be separated once they both reached full maturity. They got into horribly vicious fights and couldn’t live together regardless of how big their  cage was. So, your mileage may vary, but I still strongly suggest that two male parakeets is the best pairing!

Hide your hands – Kelly is a teenager – dealing with biting budgies

I have written before about our struggles with Kelly and biting, which were relatively unexpected since she was handfed and socialized by her breeder.  Well, we have just reached the next level of biting mania and willfulness.

There is a period of time during which a budgie is no longer a baby (after their first big molt) and before they are mature (about 1 year old).  During this time they do a lot of testing boundaries, acting out, and generally being defiant. Compounding this issue is that she’s come into breeding condition for the first time, so she’s very territorial and hormonal.

Kelly launched herself into this period with some real flair. She went from being scared of being on the couch one day to trying to burrow into it and shred the seams the next, she also decided that the dining room table wasn’t scary anymore and, in fact, needs to be turned into match sticks.  So, I can see that we are going to be doing a lot of “time outs” over the next few months.

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couch ostrich

The worst part is that the occasional biting has shifted in to high gear and is serious limit-testing.  I had a few bad moments the other day where I was surprised by it and ended up doing more of a frantic flap than a gentle roll to put her off balance.  She seems to know where the softest spots are and digs in.

We’ve pretty well failed on every method of deterrence so far, including: blowing on her lightly, saying no, putting her back in the cage, gently rolling our hands to keep her off balance and/or just not reacting to bites.

The crazy thing is that she only hates hands, you can put your face next to her and no matter what she will never bite it, she can even be trusted to groom eyebrows and have access to your nose. There is simply a major disconnect between the hands and the rest of the body.

I considered leaving her alone for a while but she loves being with us, she always wants to be on her people and preen our hair or explore our sweatshirts and it’s obvious that she enjoys interacting with us as much we enjoy her. And enjoy her we do, I hope that I don’t sound too Kelly-negative, she is so much fun and I wouldn’t change her for any other budgie.

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Going forward, I’m going to take a two-pronged approach, 1st I’m not going to step her up any more unless it’s in the context of structured reward-based clicker training. She needs a distraction as soon as she’s on the hand or she starts biting immediately and hopefully with the clicker training we can extend that period of time until she doesn’t bite at all. 2nd In case the hand issue is based in fear I’m going to work on allowing her to explore my hands when they are flat down on a surface and do not move at all. This may end up in me getting bit many more times as she examines the various textures of a hand, but hopefully it will help her become more comfortable with them.

Toby was pretty easy to convince that hands are benevolent bird-like objects, if we crook a finger at her and “nod” it she nods right back, beaks the fingernail gently and pins her eyes like she is greeting another bird (it IS as cute as it sounds).   Kelly, so far, is just not having it, but I know we went through this with Toby too; she did not bite this hard though.

Anyway – this has been sort of a rambling post.  The points are primarily that many parrots go through a “teenager” like phase where they are quite unmanageable and you may wonder where your sweet baby has gone. This is okay; they need to assert their independence and they will go back to being their nice selves after a while.  Also, sometimes even though a budgie has no reason to be a biter they are, and all of the tried-and-true methods of dealing with biting may fail – this is okay, just have patience and keep trying, and if you need to give up because you are too frustrated, that’s fine too, you can accept your budgie on their terms.  Biting, in my opinion, is not a valid reason to rehome a budgie, unless they are injuring other members of their bird-flock and simply must be single birds. Even in that case, actually, if you have the space and means to house them separately then please do that.

So, wish us luck and if you’ve got any other ideas let me know!

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What’s up with the flock?

It’s been a while since I’ve given an update on what’s going on at our house.  Kelly has almost all her flight feathers and she’s doing great at flying.  It’s been a while since she’s hit a wall or ended up stuck on the floor.

As we had hoped, being able to fly with Toby has helped Kelly’s attitude immensely.  She’s much friendlier and more engaged with us, and generally interested in coming out of the cage, which is great for helping us discipline.  It wasn’t much of a “punishment” to put her back in the cage previously for a time out, but over the past week she’s been reluctant to go home and views being put in as a detriment to fun.

Kelly loves preening her human flock and seems like a burrower and an explorer.  As she gets even more confident with her abilities I can’t wait to see what she’ll get into!

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burrowing snuggle bug
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A sample of what we can expect from adventurer Kelly (this painting has been moved)

The only downside is that we are still struggling to convince her that biting us hurts. At times I think she tries to be gentler and forgets that our hands feel pain, it’s primarily non-malicious biting, just exploratory, but she happens to have a much stronger bite than Toby. It’s easy to tell the difference between her biting because she’s exploring her world versus biting because someone made her step up and she didn’t want to.

When she bites for any reason I usually remind her to be gentle, and roll my hand a little to put her off balance a bit, not in any danger of falling, just so she can’t bite me and keep her balance.

We’ve also been working on target training, going back and forth between Patrick and me with millet as a reward. Kelly struggled initially with landing on our fingers and practicing with an incentive was a big help in building her confidence.  It also reinforced our bond as a flock, since Toby was more than willing to show Kelly what to do for treats!

Speaking of Toby, she is growing out the last pin feathers of what was a tough molt. She’s been a bit of a winter-time homebody lately, although she and Kelly are enjoying taking flights together Toby is also just as happy to play at home or take a short hop over to the play gym. As ever, unless she’s at home she’s on high alert and usually doesn’t stay in one place for too long.

I’ve been noticing more of Toby’s visible iris lately, she’s over a year old now and it’s interesting to see the changes in her eyes as she matures.

We installed the K&H Manufacturing Snuggle Up Bird Warmer, Small/Medium Grey for a little extra heat this winter, and so far so good!  A full review is coming soon.  Also in preparation for winter I’m keeping an eye on our budgie’s feet looking out for dry skin.  We will make sure to keep regular bath times to help avoid scaly, cracking feet.

Additionally, we decided to put our Zoo Med AvianSun Deluxe Floor Pet Lamp on a timer so they get 3 hours per day, this is great year round but particularly in winter to keep up with vitamin D  absorption.  Full review is coming of the avian lamp as well.

Parakeet fun with shredded newspaper

Toby and Kelly have been enjoying their Caitec Party Cubes Bird Shredding toy from Drs Foster & Smith so much that all of the paper streamers were either destroyed or thrown around and “eaten” by the vacuum.  I kept trying to pick them all up at the end of the day and refill the boxes but it was a losing battle!  So – I decided to buy a newspaper and make some shreds of my own. The finished product is a huge hit, possibly even more beloved than it was originally because I packed the shreds in really tightly and have made it much more of a challenge.

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Neither parakeet would allow me to take their picture while playing

While I was cutting out shreds I decided to see if they would enjoy playing around in a lose pile of them on the floor and oh yes they did.  I plan to do this again sometime soon and possibly hide some millet or other treats underneath the paper.  The only difficult part was keeping track of Kelly, she really enjoyed burrowing in and definitely blended in with the paper!

Parakeet perch dominance – night fights

Toby and Kelly are fervent lovers by day – well, not in the most literal sense of the word, but they follow each other around all day. Toby grooms Kelly, Kelly regurgitates to Toby and except for a couple of spats it’s generally a pretty gross parakeet lovefest.

During the day they even nap side by side very comfortably, it’s really cute, especially since during nap time they both “talk” in their sleep.

Night sleeping is a different matter entirely, there are three perches that one would think would be acceptable for a comfortable evening’s rest, two are at the same height, and one of them can certainly fit two sleepers, but no, there must be one parakeet to rule them all by sleeping higher than the other!

So although by day our budgies are besties, all bets are off as soon as the lights start to dim, and the cage becomes the venue for a battle royale of perch dominance. They start yelling at each other furiously and engage in some very serious beak warfare. Usually someone ends up falling to the bottom of the cage with a heavy thud at least once before the battle has ended. I should note that “yelling” in this context means a steady stream of terribly cute angry peeping noises.

For months the only way it ever ended is with Kelly on the top perch and Toby on one that’s slightly lower, and even after they were in position Kelly would angrily vocalize at Toby to keep her in place. Recently though we’ve had nights where Kelly ends up lower or where they both end up on the same perch. We always leave one dim light burning so that if they decide to reopen perch negotiation in the middle of the night they can see to do it.

I’ve thought about splitting them up for bed time, especially since it feels wrong to watch them engaged in what frequently appears to be a death match, but apparently this is very common behavior – if you’ve got 2 or more parakeets you’re going to have night time battles for dominance, and much like many other issues, the only one with a problem is me! The parakeets are fine and the results of the fights may even help solidify the terms of their relationship.

Also, Toby hasn’t had a single night terror since they started sleeping in the same cage, and that’s totally worth the 15 minutes of squabbling every night.