Choosing a Budgerigar

Rule No.1  - buy a pet budgerigar from registered stock. The difference in price between a pedigree bird of average quality and an unregistered budgerigar is small. (except for show specimens or rarer varieties of budgerigar.).

Registered budgerigars are sold by members of budgerigar and cage-bird societies, and buying from one of them will give you the choice of the best birds and sound free advice on rearing your budgerigar.

Whether you buy from these or from a pet shop, look for the following points when choosing your bird:

• Be careful of where you buy your budgerigar
• Buy only birds that appear to be in good health and to have no deformity.
• Look for a well-balanced, active budgerigar with bright eyes, tight feathers and a clean vent
• Do not buy a crippled bird or one that looks unhappy. You may feel sorry for it, but remember that it is almost impossible to cure a weakling and it will not become the same cheerful companion as a healthy bird.
• Ignore any budgerigar that is thin, looks weak, has a small head in comparison to the size of its body, a long snaky neck, or a misshapen beak.
• "Runners," small awkward-looking birds that scuttle across the floor of the aviary and are unable to fly, are unsightly and not a good buy.
• Never buy a budgerigar with an undershot beak (the lower part longer than the upper) as the bird may not be able to eat properly, in which case it will become weak from lack of nourishment.

Determining the Sex

It is not easy to determine the sex of a young bird, but the cere of the older cock bird is blue while that of the older hens is greyish pink to brown, and this difference is quite obvious.

It is impossible to differentiate between the sexes of very young birds so it is advisable to leave, the sexing until they are about six weeks old and ready to be transferred from the nest. From this time, it is important to keep the young cocks and hens in separate aviaries.
The cere of a young cock at this time is usually (although not always) pink, and should be rounder and more prominent than that of the hen. The cere of the hen may be a bluish colour with a whitish edge to the nostril, but again the colours are by no means distinct. From six weeks, the Ceres of both gradually assume their adult colours, over a period of some weeks.
 

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