I’ve had my little budgie for 2 1/2 weeks I keep a shallow dish of water in the bottom of the cage and a dish of seed and pellets , every day I try a different fruit. The only thing he’s enthusiastic about is the seed and to my knowledge he has never had any water. Should I be concerned? Are there any other ways to feed him water?
Hi Susan,
Budgies do not drink a lot of water so he is probably taking a drink here and there when you aren’t around. However, a cup attached to the side of the cage near a perch is better than one on the cage floor. Mainly because it is less likely to get soiled or turned over. Be sure to change the water daily and clean the cup. I do not recommend the water bottles for birds.
As for the diet, budgies are grass parakeets and do feed on seeds on the ground in the wild, along with other foods. The seeds they eat in the wild are fresh and packed with nutrients. But the seeds in loose seed mixes tend to no longer be fresh enough to retain nutrients and any added vitamins are lost when the bird hulls the seeds. Pellets are a good alternative – they are ground up seeds and nutrients, mixed with vitamins and made into a pellet. However, as you are finding out, the parakeet would prefer his seeds to the pellets. We do make pellets, but we also make foraging diets. These diets contain fresh, whole, hulled seeds with additional nutrients offered in a cake or berry form. They provide the same nutrition as pellets, but they are not ground up and contain the whole seeds that are more natural for your bird. These Nutri-Berries, Avi-Cakes or Pellet-Berries can be fed alone or combined with pellets and your bird will be getting complete nutrition. You can still offer fruits, veggies and leafy greens although in general budgies are not fans of fruits. In order to convert your bird to our foraging diets, you can begin by crumbling them and mixing them with the loose seeds. You will gradually reduce the amount of loose seeds until you are only feeding our diets. Once he is eating them well, you can stop feeding loose seeds and start offering the foraging foods whole rather than crumbling them. I’ll provide a link to our feeding guide below.
Thank you for asking Lafeber,
Brenda
