Following the story of how we decided to breed budgies we covered in this post earlier: How difficult is to breed budgies? Part I. Now it is time to present the second part of our adventures.
I think we were pretty successful for first timers. We got six chicks out of eight eggs. Second egg was cracked – Zoe or George cracked it accidentally. Seventh egg was infertile.
As per color - three are copies of George(yellow), two are white and blue and last one - something special. She was with dark skin when born and was different from the rest in everything. Her body is blue turquoise and wings are dark grey – almost black with white feather tips. We call her Maleficent because she is unusual and blackish, but loved her and decided to keep her.
Out of six we got two boys and four girls. It is hard to distinguish baby budgies sex 100%. The rule of thumb is – if cere doesn’t have white spots and white areas around nostrils then it is most likely a boy – otherwise girl. It works in 90% of the cases.
Even though all babies became quite big and fully covered with feathers – they preferred to stay in nesting box and fed by their parents. They all got out eventually.
You cannot imagine how much mess 8 budgies can make, considering six of them are babies. They play with everything including seeds and floor around cage is covered with seeds in two meters radius. They don’t eat seeds; they sit in the feeder and start moving their legs so fast that seeds flying out of the feeder and cage. And they take turns too. We have one feeder with perch and young budgies found that it is fun to squeeze in whole between perch and feeder and they go there one buy one in both direction. Eldest one however became too big that couldn’t get through and stuck every time she tried. In one month she became much bigger than her five year old parents. Even in budgie family first baby gets more food and attention.
What happened next is struck me the most. George(dad) started “flirting” with daughters and Zoe(mom) started nipping them. Zoe started bullying her daughters because she became jealous or wanted to show everyone that she is the queen of the cage. Budgie family is different than human: if you can eat by yourself - you are on your own – and there is no more parent-child connection or protection.
As soon as Maleficent left nesting box – Zoe started next nesting cycle. We found new eggs in nesting box - but we weren’t ready for it. We tired from fist brood: mess, noise and we didn’t know what to do with five babies that we already have. We moved Zoe to a separate cage. If you don’t stop hen, she has eggs until she is done and may even die, but won’t stop. The only way is to take out the nesting box or move her to another cage.
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