HI there sorry if this didn't in the right forum,

My budgie is currently sitting on 5 wee bubs,

The 2 oldest ones hatched on the same day and they are 3 weeks old,

The youngest is nearly 2 weeks. Is it okay If i was to handreared one of the older ones.

I really want to have an extra tame budgie that was handreared by me.

I would be using Kaytee Exact formula and with a bent spoon?

How warm/hot does the formula have to be, 100 degrees?

I know that if its too hot it will make a hole in the crop and if its too cold it wont digest properly.

Also would you know what colour he/she would be....... only has a bit of pin fathers top of head is yellow, wings are black and yellow and on its back is a blueish colour but i can hardly see it, i will get a picture soon thanks for all your help.

Edited October 19, 200816 yr by maesie
typo's

You do not need to handraise a budgie to make it tame. I woud just handle the baby in the nest every day so it gets used to be handled and wait till it fledges before seperating it from its parents. I have had to handraised one of my budgies and now i am having problems with her not eating seed because she had no parent to teach her which is causing her to not have a good diet at the moment. I would encourage you to let the parent raise the young, but this is just my personal opinion.

If the hen is raising and feeding the bird, why do you want to had rear it?

 

Why not just tame it? Handle it a lot form an early age. Let Mum feed it. They always do a better job

We had to handraise some of ours that the mum plucked, and they made no better pets than any other. It's not necessary to take a baby away from its mother. It's extra hard work for you too, when the mum is doing it as he natural job anyway. You may not end up choosing the best one to tame anyway if you just pick one. I would suggest taking them all out for a bit of a cuddle one by one each day when they're a few weeks old, and play with them heaps when they actually fledge (although that can be hard because they never stay still when they're first learning to fly lol). They don't necessarily bond to you just because you fed them though. It's not like they stay bonded to their mothers their whole lives.

hi,

Every time my budgies have had a clutch. I have tried handling it every day but it didnt have a strong bond with me and it wasnt very tame.

She use to have 6 bubs but today one of them got squashed by the bigger two. The second youngest isnt getting as much food either so I thought if I handreared the bigger one the little ones might get fed more and wont get squashed,

Some of my friends at school have handreared and said that the babies make beautiful pets.

I know all of the ups and downs of handrearing too

Edited October 19, 200816 yr by KAZ
edited for typos and no punctuation.

Sorry, but if you know all the ups and downs, then what are the questions in your first post doing there?

 

So you are believing friends at school over experienced breeders?

Not all handraised babies turn out good pets, i have another budgie i handraised last year that once she learnt to fly she stopped being friendly and started biting so i had to put her back in the aviary.

Sorry guys, i do know some of the ups and downs.

And I suppose you are right you are more experienced.

I just wanted a more tame pet. I've never really had a tame budgie so I have looked up on heaps of sites about other people handrearing and on one site it said...... Some of the reasons people handrear,

Mothers pluck them,

You just want a very tame bird,

Siblings are smaller so therefore might get squashed,

Arent getting fed properly,

So I thought well the second and third sentence is what mine is so i thought i should hand tame.

Obviously I'm wrong so i probably wont try handrear anymore

Edited October 19, 200816 yr by KAZ
edited AGAIN for typos and lack of punctuation.

Personally i would avoid hand raring and only use it has a very last resort.

My cookie came inside just as he was ready to leave the nest. i brought him inside with his dad so he still got fed, but he got tamed at the same time- it worked really well and when cookie was weaned his dad went back in the aviary. Cookie is very tame now :laughter:

 

Good luck

okay thanks liv that is quite a good idea thanks,

If you handle the baby in the nest a couple of times per day you will easily be able to tame him. By hand rearing do you mean just feeding the baby or taking him out of the mothers nest for good and keeping him in some kind of brooder?

I have a number of handreared birds, both budgies and other parrots and I honestly feel that handrearing often causees more problems. Handreared birds can be very demanding, they can get attached to a single person and attack all others, etc.

 

I personally think co-rearing(letting the parents feed while you handle) is a much better way to get lovely friendly pets. The main thing you have to realise is that it takes longer to tame a budgie than a larger parrot. It can take up to six months to have a budgie really tame as they are a more independent species, whereas I picked up a baby lorikeet today which had come straight out of the nest this arvo never having seen a human before and it is already a sucker for a scratch behind the ear!

 

If you handle all the babies and then pick the one that seems to be the quietest and frindliest and spend heaps of time with it then you will have a great pet but you have to be prepared to put the time in.

okay thanks alot everyone