Budgies; the colourful clowns of cageland.
Budgies are actually pests in some parts of the world, where they swarm in huge numbers, damaging crops as they migrate around their territory. To blame are the feral birds that managed to survive long enough to find sanctuary in a flock, there to breed like the flying mice they are. In general, a budgie's bright colours, noisy habits and general inability to fly well enough after a life in a cage, means they do not survive. Every other territorial bird it encounters, will bully it, and every predator wants to taste the brightly advertised snack. When you are running all the time, there is no time to eat and rest, and you will soon die. Don't release unwanted birds, even if the poor thing survives, it will only end up being a pestilence for some farmer.
That said, budgies are small agile birds that can get enough exercise in a relatively small cage. At Greenpets, relatively small means you can't walk in upright carrying two buckets without bumping anything. Relatively small is where you keep something you plan to provide with proper habitat sooner than later. Relatively big, on the other hand, can mean anything more spacious than the tiny wire jail they sold you your pet in. Sometimes just opening the cage and letting the poor thing fly around a bit makes me feel better already. One has to be careful though, sometimes the animal you want to teach some love, was taught some serious fear and hatred when young. Budgies are like that. Some allow you to handle them, especially the ones who know you from birth. New arrivals tend to visciously knaw on your fingers. They are quite strong biters, budgies are.
In general, budgies are very easy to keep, and with a bit of proper interest, you can keep them healthy and happy quite cheaply. See further down this page for all sorts of interesting things you can feed your budgie, you might be surprised to know where so-called budgie seed comes from. No, budgies are colourful all by themselves, they don't bloom and form seed, silly.
Budgies breed easily enough if the conditions are right, and you can run out of space very quickly once they get going. Like mice, comparitively speaking, when compared to, for example, the rare Agnodusian Eagle that lays one egg every leap year provided April first is a Sunday. Go see the page on breeding, it should tell you enough to get going. Which brings me to that part of the article we all dread: the neverending bitching about Natural Living and all that. Right now, 2017, in Gauteng, you will find budgies for sale all over, but they are starting to show serious signs of inbreeding. I was made aware some fifteen or twenty years ago that a chap from Lenazia decided to corner the budgie market in Gauteng. He went around buying up every budgie he could find, and selling back into circulation only males.
I am told he made some pretty moolah by monopolising the entire budgie trade, but now Gauteng's budgies are so inbred, we sit with four grey budgies, and five yellow ones, of which two are albinos. Yellow budgies are rare but not strange, albinos on the other hand... Add to that the more frequent appearance of assymetry, disturbed feather arrangements, beak deformities... Gauteng's budgies are in trouble, and we at Greenpets plan to do something. To start with, we offer a budgie exchange. We have had very few takers so far, admittedly, it sounds weird that we would swop you for another budgie that looks nearly identical, but as we get budgies in from further and further away, we are surer and surer to find fresh blood. Unlike the Sultan of Crippled Budgies, we are not trying to get rich, we are trying to help a species being bred into disease and failure by people who insist on profit no matter what damage they leave behind.
Support the Greenpets Budgie Genome Diversification Programme. No, that is just a thought-up name, trying to sound impressive and knowledgeable when all we want is for budgies and people to feel free again.