עברית
Budgerigar Budgie Parakeet
Information
The origin of the Budgerigar parakeets is from Australia. It's the most popular bird in the world and therefore the cheapest to buy. Budgerigars are very easy to grow and tame, and that's why they are recommended for children and beginner pet owners. Budgerigars live between 5 to 8 years, and reach sexual maturity at the age of 6 months. The length of an average parakeet is 17 centimeters and it's average weight is 30 grams. The parrot has a good speech ability. In nature, the dominant body color of parakeets is green, but in captivity there are also blue, yellow and white colors.
Parakeet Reproduction
I got my parakeets as a present from my sister, when they were about a month old. We called them Mali and Muli. This is how they looked:
Then, we didn't know they're a male and a female. Each parakeet had a blue cere (the part that overlaps the beak), as you can see in the picture.
At the age of 6 months, Muli's cere changed and turned brown. At first, we thought that it might be a fungal infection, but after reading about it on the internet we learned that it's a physical change that indicates
that a parakeet is sexually matured.
Parakeets indeed reach sexual maturity at the age of 6 months, but it's not recommended to mate parakeets before they are a year old - because only then is the female mature enough to take care of its baby birds.
So we waited another half a year, and bought a much larger cage, one that would fit the soon to be bigger family. We attached a nesting box to the cage.
Throughout most of the day, we kept the cage open, so that the parakeets could get out and fly around, or walk on the cage (as can be seen in the picture).
On the very same day when we attached the nesting box, Mali started going into it. Then for about a week she would stay inside it for most of the day.
Mali also visited her there, but for very short periods of time.
A week later, the parakeets started mating. It happened mostly during the morning hours, each time for a minute of two.
I was lucky and filmed them while they were mating:
Three weeks later, the female laid the first egg. She continued laying eggs every other day until there were 6 eggs.
Throughout the nesting and the raising period, the male searches for food and feeds the female. Mali did that with great devotion, as can be seen in the following picture and movie:
Parakeet baby birds
Three weeks later, the first baby parakeet hatched. Parakeet babies hatch with their belly swollen, naked of feathers, and eyes closed. The weight of a newly born chick is about 2 grams. The chicks are being fed every two hours, and they develop very fast - the double their weight several times over, only after a few days. Their eyes open only on the sixth day, when the feather can be seen. Since the chick hatches naked, the mother is responsible for keeping it's body warn, so she covers it most of the time with her body, as can be seen in the picture.
After two days, the second chick hatched. As you can see, the first chick has already doubled it's weight.
After two more days, the third chick hatched. Notice that the chicks are "piled up" - that's how they warm each other.
After two more days, the fourth chick has hatched. It can't be seen in the picture - he's covered by his Parakeet siblings.
Fifth Spring:
To a video of the baby birds:
Congratulation! 6 baby birds hatched out of 6 eggs!
Taming Parakeets
The first hatched Parakeet has just turned two weeks old. In that age Parakeets start exploring the world around, so it's the right timing to start taming them, and familiarize them with human presence. You don't have to be a parrot expert to succeed - just hold the Parakeet, caress it, and be gentle. The bird will get used to you and slowly learn to accept your presence and the touch of your hand. It's recommended to feed the birds with a special type of porridge which you can buy in pet stores.
Two weeks after the baby birds hatched we started letting the baby birds to get used to a human touch.
Today, our birds don't reject humans, and they fly and sit on our shoulders freely:
Parakeet Nutrition
Parakeets eat mostly seeds. The parakeet removes the peel with its tongue and beak. Parakeets love to eat fresh fruits and vegetables, which provide the maximum vitamins and minerals required for them. They prefer fleshy vegetables like broccoli, carrot, zucchini, yams and pumpkins. Parakeets also like to eat herbs, such as: celery, parsley, mint and coriander, which are enriched with iron and vitamin A. Among the fruits that are likable to the parakeets are watermelon, melon and grapes. Types of food that are considered to be poisonous for the parakeets and they must not eat are: avocado and chocolateSpeech
A tamed parakeet can be an excellent speaker, and in fact Guinness's book of records mentions a parakeet named Sparky which it's vocabulary included over 500 words, from which it could build 300 short sentences. Sparky won the first place among 3,000 parrots in a speech contest.Links and Additional Information
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