Sexing my budgie

Visuals: Pictures to Help Sex your Budgie

Sexing my budgie

Generally the colour of a budgie's cere (the coloured area at the top of the beak surrounding the nostrils) is the simplest indicator of gender in adult budgies.

Most adult males have a blue cere with a smooth, waxy completion. Some males, such as albinos, lutinos, fallows, and some recessive pieds do not develop a blue cere, instead it remains the pinkish/purple colour they had as a juvenile bird. Below we have added an link to our member's birds and there is an example of the mutations that do not develop the normal blue colored cere in a male budgie. Click here Example of Cere

Adult females have a cere that ranges from a light beige or tan colour through to a dark chocolate brown colour, which become flaky when they are in breeding condition.

Another indicator is the shape; males tend to have a more rounded bulbous cere compared to the females flatter shaped cere.

When budgies are a younger age (6 week to 6 months) it is much harder to work out the sex and it takes a trained eye to pick up the slight differences. The things to look for are an even pinky/purple colour over the whole cere for young males and a pink or blue cere with noticable white rings around the nostrils for females. This is where many go wrong for we associate pink for girls and blue for boys and many pet shop employees believe that this is how to tell the difference and incorrectly sex the birds.

If you are still confused about which gender your bird is the nest step is to look at the behaviour of the bird. Females are known to bite harder than males, which is a great way to tell if you have more than one bird. But still any bird can bite hard when not hand tamed or panicked. Males are the talkers of the species and re quite happy to sit alone and warble and chatter to themselves for hours on end. While females have an urge to chew and rip at things; it is a natural breeding instinct to get a nest set up.

Visuals Pictures to Help Sex your Budgies (babies and adults) pictures provided by Kaz BBC Global Moderator.

Cock 2

(above picture) adult cock bird (male)

Cock 3

(above picture) adult cock bird (male)

cock baby cere

(picture above) baby recessive pied cock bird (male), in this variety the cere will remain pink in the cock birds, the hen's cere will be like a normal hen. Other varieties where the cock (male) cere will remain pink fallows, dark eyed clears (DEC), lacewings, albino/lutino,

cere of dominant pied cock kaz photo

(above picture) adult cock (male) double factor dominant pied, in this variety the cere will turn blue unlike the recessive pied but sometimes the pied gene can make the cere look pied also so it may be partially pink and blue.  The best way to distinquish a double factor dominant pied is combining factors of the cere, visible ring ring and patterning of the markings.

hen cere baby kaz photo

(picture above) baby hen (female) notice though the cere is very pink it is not as smooth or rounded as a baby cock (male) cere.

adult hen cere kaz photo

(picture above) adult hen (female) this is the same budgie grown up her baby picture is right above this photo. 

Hen 1

(above picture) hen (female)

Baby Hen 2

(above picture) baby hen (female)

cere of recessive cock kaz photo

(above picture) adult recessive pied hen (female) you can see unlike the male recessive pied the cere turns tannish pink, it can also vary to a dark brown, to light tan or light blue.

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