Ask Lafeber

I have a budgie Question

I am a experienced bird mom I have a African grey and a Yellow headed Amazon so I know a lot about bird care, just recently I decided I wanted to get a few little budgies because I have larger birds and I wanted to get some cute little friends to add to my flock. So I contacted my breeder and right away she replied and I got two little Budgies. But the problem is that they are not tame and really crazy I am not giving up on them but I just need some training tips for smaller birds I have been around larger parrots all my life and I could use some help 🙂

Hi May,

These little guys are almost impossible to tame when you have two sharing a cage. If these are babies and you separate them, you will have better luck. If they are adults and bonded to each other, they are unlikely to want to be handled by people because they already have a companion. One thing I do want to warn you about is to keep them away from your other birds. Larger birds can and will kill a smaller bird like a budgie. The Amazon is probably the biggest threat because they will actively chase and attack a smaller bird. Both your Amazon and Grey would run to bite them if they fly and land on the cages. So the budgies should never be out of the cage while in the same room as the larger birds, and the same goes for the larger birds if the small birds are in the room.

Back to taming, I’ll give you the links to our behavior & training pages and they will give you a better idea of how to work with these guys. You never know what a bird’s personality might be, so you may as well try.

Pet Bird and Parrot Behavior

Teaching Your Bird

Thank you for Asking Lafeber,

Brenda