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If you are travelling with your bird by car, take it in its cage if possible. If the cage is too big then a smaller one with some of its favourite toys is advisable. Also take along some of the regular seed and water as well as a plant/chemical sprayer filled with water (never one that has previously held chemicals). If you are spending any length of time where you are going (for instance if you are moving to a new area) it is advisable to mix the water from the new area with water that you took with you. This will allow your budgie to adjust to the new water and thus prevent illness in your budgie. The same should be done with the seed. If you are travelling by air, bus or train you will need to check with the company with which you are travelling as to what their regulations are with regards to travelling with birds. If you are planning on going away and are unable to take your bird with you then you need to arrange for someone to either housesit or to at least visit your bird twice a day to check that everything’s okay. Someone who has experience with birds is best. You should leave the following information with them:
Remember that your bird will miss you and that it is a big responsibility to ask someone to look after your budgie, when your budgie will not be at its best. To help your bird you can set the TV or radio to be on for some time per day to provide some stimulation. This can occur at any time. It is caused by a change in the bird’s environment, a change in temperature or weather for instance. The budgie loses a few feather, rarely the primary wing or tail feathers. This, as the name suggests, happens once a year. It usually takes place in autumn. The budgie will lose and regrow all its feathers over a period of six to eight weeks. During this time your budgie will be very susceptible to colds and chills so extra vitamins are advisable. Phosphate tonic is good as well as seed soaked in cod liver oil emulsion. Also see French moult One of the worst things a budgie owner ever has to do is to put down one of those cheerful creatures. But times do come when it is more humane to put the bird down than to let them continue suffering. On of the best ways to do this (without a trip to the vet) is to take a few balls of cotton wool, soaked in engine oil or chloroform, and place them in a jar. Wrap the budgie in a cloth and place it in the jar and close the lid. Leave them in there for five to ten minutes. It only takes a moment to put them to sleep. It is the more humane thing to do in cases such as with an egg bound hen or a chick with French moult. One of the best things to do when you get a budgie is to determine where the nearest vet is who has avian experience. You might have a situation where you require a vet and then one with avian experience is the best. Like humans, budgies’ toenails grow continuously. Covering the perches with sand perch covers can slow the process but it is no replacement for cutting the nails. Unless your budgie is extremely tame, this is a two-man job. While one holds the budgie’s foot steady the other needs to trim the nails with an ordinary nail clippers. There are blood vessels in the nails so care needs to be taken not to accidentally cut into those vessels (they can be seen in the nail as a dark line. It extends approximately 2/3 to 3/4 into the nail). The best is to take it millimetre by millimetre, each time checking that you are not close to the vessel. If you do break the vessel however, you will need to stop the bleeding, being small budgies have little enough blood, they can’t afford to lose any. Baking powder or applied pressure should work. You will need to keep an eye on the budgie for a while to check that shock doesn’t set in. If the bleeding doesn’t stop then contact your nearest vet. A healthy bird shouldn’t need to have its beak trimmed, but occasionally it does become necessary, especially in the case of a budgie with an undershot beak. To allow your bird to keep its own beak trimmed it should be encouraged to chew. A cuttlefish or mineral block is good as well as grit. These should be available anyway for the birds’ own health. The same procedure is applied to trimming the beak as with trimming the toenails. The reasons to clip wings can vary. Generally if you are planning on taming your budgie clipping the wings can make it easier. But clipped wings will reduce the budgie’s ability to fly (which is the point) but it will reduce its ability to escape pets and young children, so special care needs to be taken when the bird is out. Clipping the wings is better than plucking them. If you clip the wings, the new feathers will only grow back during the next moult, whereas if you pluck the new feathers will grow back within the next six to eight weeks. To clip the wings, extend the wing you plan on doing first so that you can see the feathers lying against one another. Use a pair of sharp scissors to trim the first five feathers so that they are the same length as the sixth feather. Feathers that still have the sheaths on them should not be cut. These are new feathers, known as blood feathers, and they are filled with blood. If a feather does start to bleed, it needs to be gently plucked from the wing with tweezers. Bleeding might be noticed from the follicle (the follicle is the base of the feather, where the feather connects to the wing) and pressure needs to be applied with clean gauze or cloth. The budgie needs to be watched to ensure that shock does not set in. Shock is the worst thing that can happen to a bird. If the physical damage doesn’t kill the bird the shock most likely will. The signs of shock in humans, cats and dogs are very similar to those in birds but are very had to determine in birds. If your budgie has experienced some kind of trauma and then acts listless, is fluffed up and breathing rapidly shock is most likely setting in. Get to a vet as soon as you can. Being small, budgies don't have a lot of blood to spare so bleeding of any kind needs to be treated immediately. Baking powder, cornflower or applied pressure should work. You will need to keep an eye on the budgie for a while to check that shock doesn’t set in. If the bleeding doesn’t stop then contact your nearest vet. The easiest way to sex a budgie is to look at its cere. The cere is the part of the body that has the nostrils, visible above the beak. In males, the cere is a blue colour, the deeper the blue the most likely to breed. In females, the cere ranges from pale blue to brown. When the cere is brown the female is in breeding season. Lutino’s (yellow budgies) and Albino’s (white budgies) and a few other colour varieties are harder to sex this way as in their cases the cere colours in male and female are not all that different due to lacking colour. These can be sexed by an experienced breeder or vet. Signs:
If your budgie shows any of the above signs, or more than one, speak to someone who knows about budgies or a vet. |
