Ask Lafeber

My female Budgie is extremely aggressive and I need help or she has to go to a rescue

My oldest budgie(female) is named Blue and I’ve had her for around 3 years now. When she was a few months she was the perfect bird. I could take her out of the cage, I could actually touch the cage and mess inside of the cage. She was alone for about a year when I got my second(a male who passed away a year later.) Her aggressive behavior started before I got him and thought it was because she didn’t have another bird. Her behavior stayed the same and I got my 3rd(another male) a year ago. Recently I moved them into a larger cage with a decider in the middle that can be removed to make one large cage. She attacks me, objects, and people who touch her side of the cage and tries to attack when someone is messing on the males side of the cage. I can’t touch the inside of the cage because she attacks peoples hands. They aren’t the pinch like bites from males every now and again, she screams, flies onto your hand, opens her wings, and bites down hard enough to break skin. Her behavior is getting harder and harder to deal with. She recently attacked the male and that was the last straw for her and I’ve been heavily been considering bringing her to a rescue. I leave for college soon and don’t wish to burden my family with an aggressive Budgie. I’m trying to give her one more chance and wanted some advice because if it doesn’t work, for the sake of my family and my other Budgie she’s going to the rescue(I talked with them and they said if I bring her they’ll send her to a bird sanctuary.)

Hi,

Her behavior is actually normal behavior. While female budgies can be very good pets, not all of them are. She is being territorial and this is a natural behavior. You can’t train her not to be territorial. You have to understand that even though they are bred in captivity, budgies are still an exotic bird. They have natural instincts and their behavior is based on instincts. When a bird is territorial, the best solution is to stick train it because if the bird is tame, then once you get it away from the cage, the bird stops being territorial. A lot of owners make the same mistake that you did by getting another bird. This only increases the territorial behavior. Either the two birds bond, and both get protective of their cage, or one bird wants the other bird to be gone. Some female budgie won’t accept a male, or they are picky and don’t like the male we give them. In the wild, budgies choose a mate. We present them with a mate and expect them to like each other, and a lot of times they don’t. The problem with female budgies is they can be so aggressive, if they do not like another bird in the cage, they will kill it. I can’t tell you how to fix this because there isn’t a fix. With a bird that is cage aggressive, you have to respect their behavior and work around it. Most cages have access to the food and water from the outside and have trays that pull out. Of course there are times you need to access the inside of the cage. When you do that, you might have to move the bird to a carrier or extra cage. Unfortunately, she isn’t very likely to change and meet your expectations. As a three month old, she was still a baby. But once she became mature, she has hormones that she responds to. If there is a sanctuary with room for her, that might be the best option for her.

Thank you for asking Lafeber,

Brenda