Budgies: A Guide to Caring for Your Parakeet

Your complete guide to caring for budgies!

• Selection tips, including color choice, gender, age, recognizing good health, and personality
• Basic care information on cage size, shape, construction, placement, accessories, and maintenance
• Healthy diet options, including pellets, seeds, greens, vegetables, fruits, and treats
• Basic training techniques like finger training, perch training, towel training, and more
• Parakeet health information from finding a veterinarian and trimming feathers and nails to common diseases and disorders

The colorful budgie—also widely known as a parakeet—is playful, energetic, entertaining, easy to train, and sometimes even talkative!

Budgies have been highly sought-after pet birds since the mid-1860s, when they were brought from Australia to England and the European continent. Today, domestically bred budgies are one of the most popular pet birds in America. This Complete Care Made Easy pet guide presents new and experienced bird keepers with insight into every aspect of selecting, caring for, and maintaining well-behaved, happy pet birds.

Angela Davids provides the ideal introductory pet guide, with chapters covering the characteristics of the irresistible budgie, the history of budgies in the wild, selection of a healthy, typical pet bird, housing and care, feeding, training, and health care. An appendix of bird societies, a glossary of terms, and a complete index are also included for easy and helpful reference.

Potential budgie owners will find excellent advice about selection of the color and sex as well as suitability of the delicate budgie with families, children, and other pets. You'll find tips on where to find your parakeet and what to look for to make sure they're healthy and a good personality fit for you and your family.

The author discusses the importance of the housing, placement of the cage, and the purchase of toys, cups, perches, and more to make your parakeet feel safe and happy. You'll find all the information you need to select the right budgie cage as well as how to clean and maintain it.

A bird's diet is critical to its ongoing health, and a chapter devoted to feeding the budgie provides all the details you need to choose the best diet whether it be different types of seeds, greens, fruits, veggies, or grit, as well as which human foods to avoid. A dedicated chapter covers finger training, towel training, perch training, and offers an easy-to-follow primer on teaching a budgie to talk.

Budgies are very hardy birds, but they are subject to a variety of illnesses possible genetic medical conditions. You'll find information on choosing a local veterinarian who is experienced with birds as well as instructions on how to trim wing feathers and nails.

Bird fanciers interested in learning more will find detailed information about the breeding, basic color variations, and genetics of this perfect beginner's bird. You'll learn all about sex differentiation, selecting parents, mating, egg binding, and nesting. Discover the different color mutations from the basic green, blue, white, and yellow to major color varieties.

Start your rewarding journey as a parakeet parent right, with Budgies!

Angela Davids is the creator of KeepEmCookin.com, an educational website and online support group for women who are experiencing a high-risk pregnancy. She spent a total of 21 weeks on bedrest during her two pregnancies. She was inspired to write Stuck In Bed to offer moms on bed rest hope and reassurance, along with tips about how they can still be fantastic moms, even when stuck in bed.