8 Easily Avoidable Budgie Breeding Mistakes

Everyone loves baby budgies and loves to breed them at home. For every budgie owner, breeding budgies is a dream. Budgie breeding is easy compared to other parakeet breeding. But still many budgie owners unknowingly make mistakes and fail to breed them. With my experience, I am sharing 8 easily avoidable budgie breeding mistakes and the ways to avoid them.

Separating breeding pair

If you have more than two budgies, it’s best to separate the breeding pair. The female budgie that is laying eggs could become very aggressive and protective of her nesting box. If you have more than one female and a single breeding box, they can actually fight over the same nesting box and get ugly really fast.

Because of not providing sufficient breeding boxes, colony breeding may be dangerous. If you still provide sufficient breeding boxes, the danger is not only on the breeding pair it could actually get worse and find broken eggs or even worse, dead chicks. When two females are interested in the same breeding box, the other female could wait for the mother to go out of the nest for food, or to drink, then attack the eggs or chicks if any are found.

Here is a easy guide on budgie gender identification which even makes you easier in sexing budgies.

Immature Or Aged Pair

The second mistake is not taking your budgie’s age into consideration. The appropriate age for breeding budgies is between 1 to 3 years of age. While males could go upto 6 years of age for breeding. But females are supposed to be not more than 3 years old, and of course there is a reason for that. Not only during this period is when your budgies are most fertile.

Budgies actually mature at about six months. But if you breed budgies before 1 year old it could result in a lot of unnecessary problems from the parents not being able to take care of the babies to other health complications with the mother.

And if you are breeding budgies after 3 years of age, you will run the risk of not having a healthy offspring or for the female to get egg bound. As well, which is a very serious condition that needs immediate avian vet intervention.

Gap between clutches

The third mistake is not giving the breeding budgie pair a break. Breeding, laying eggs and raising chicks takes a lot and I mean a lot of energy for a budgie. And you will notice while there are still chicks in the breeding box when they get old enough, the mother will start laying eggs again. However, you should prevent that from happening over and over again or you will run into serious health problems. For example, when your budgies are molting, that too takes a lot of energy. Imagine on top of that letting them uncontrollably breed.

Nutritious diet

The fourth mistake is not adapting the nutrition to your breeding pair. Well, budgies always need a good healthy and fairy diet, but with breeding pairs you need to be extra careful. A good seed mix and fresh veggies are awesome, but you need to provide your breeding pair with extra supplements, sprouts, boiled eggs, extra calcium or mineral blocks.

These are important for a lot of reasons, some of which we already discussed like preventing egg binding and abandoning the chicks, but it could also prevent infertile eggs and weak chicks. Eggs have protein in them, and of course eggshell provides calcium, also the mineral block will keep calcium supply all the time for your budgie.

Now that we have covered four mistakes, people do before having chicks. Let’s look at three mistakes that people make after the chicks are born, which brings us to the fifth mistake.

Budgie breeding cage

Budgies love to fly and play in a spacious area. Providing budgies with a large cage makes them healthy and happy. Which results in good breeding. Budgie’s cage or aviary should be larger in width than the height. Because they fly horizontally.

For a pair of budgies, the breeding cage should measure at least 60 cm in length, 40 cm in width and 40 cm in height. Equipped the cage with standard budgie accessories – at least a mineral block, two perches, a calcium block or cuttlefish bone, seed mix, sprouts and fresh food, water, and a breeding box.

Budgie breeding box

What breeding box are you using?

You need to be careful with what nesting material you are using. Budgies even breed without nesting materials. They lay eggs in any shape or material. However, some of these materials are not recommended. If it’s too slippery, it could cause splayed feet for the newborn chicks.

This condition happens when the chicks are too heavy to stand on their feet and it results with the legs splayed away from their body. That’s why adding bedding or making a curved base in the breeding box is highly recommended. This also helps chicks grow healthy and prevent displayed feet problems all at once.

So never imagine having a slippery material that even older buddies can barely stand on. Adding a proper breeding box helps to avoid this problem. And if you keep watching the chicks, you can actually catch the problem when it first starts.

I use wooden boxes and recommend the same as it is the closest to their natural breeding behavior. Since wild budgies lay eggs inside tree holes, the sooner you find out they might have splayed feet, the easier the problem could be solved. However, if you wait too much, it might be irreversible. So keep close attention.

Over stressing baby budgies

The eighth mistake most budgie owners make is, when baby budgies are about five weeks old and I mean when they just learned how to fly.

It’s amazing to start playing, training and bonding with your budgie chicks, However, don’t forget how fragile they still are. They can easily get tired when you let them fly across your room or house.

But with chicks you need to be extra careful. And what is enough for old budgies might not be enough for five or 6 weeks old chicks. If you want to play with them and let them fly, I suggest you take them to a closed room where they can’t hit any solid objects and get hurt.

Young chicks still don’t know how to control their flight and can head straight to the wall even when they see it. And you will end up with an injured chick that can barely if at all perch.

Mites

Mites can easily infest breeding pairs where there are eggs and chicks. These mites bite and feed on your budgie’s blood. If you are too late to see budgies have been infested with mites, they could render your eggs infertile and kill the already born chicks. So Let’s talk about how to prevent red mites from invading your breeding budgie.

First off, they come by sticking on your dog or cat pet if you have any. If your pet goes in and out of your home, it could easily bring mites with it and even you. When you come, say from your garden, you might have picked a couple of mites without even knowing. And when you go inside, they just go straight to your budgies. And they really do reproduce quickly and using the wood in the cage, they can lay their eggs in there. So to prevent mites, you need to make sure to switch clothes before interacting with your budgie, so you don’t transfer the mites.

And also clean the nesting box on a weekly basis, to not let the mites silently reproduce. And if you do find mites, just disinfect the box or replace it with a new one.

If there are already mites, it’s just not worth it to try and clean it.

Never ever, even by mistake make these above mentioned mistakes. Most newbie budgie owners and even old budgie owners unknowingly make these mistakes. Remember these easily avoidable budgie breeding mistakes for successful breeding of your feather friend.