Well I am lucky then, my birds eat almost all of their seeds.

Some budgies won't eat any sunflower or safflower seeds but what they don't eat the wild birds do.

I am happy that I don't have fussy birds except Boris who thinks any fruit or vegie that is not celery is dangerous! :ausb:

Though at 5:30am this morning while cutting the carrot, celery, snow pea sprouts, mung bean sprout and corn.... I did think. * there has to be a better way.*.......

 

But after it was done and the crumble mix was feed. I had time to sit back with a cup of coffee and reflect.

 

I enjoy my birds :ausb:

My Candy weighed 56 grams at one point and couldnt even fly - he is around the 43g mark right now and suits him fine - he has bags of energy and is always first out of the cage. I increased the veggies and fruit and took away all treats.

 

I can imagine some show budgies to weigh 100g, some I saw at a show were huge and bigger than my tiels.

Are we all talking about the same type of bird here?

 

A healthy, smaller-type American budgie will weigh in around 30-34 grams. Daz, I hate to say it, but a 180 gram budgie is unimaginable to me. You are almost talking the weight of Timneh African Greys there! I know the show budgies are a bit heavier, but I thought they were the ones that weighed in at 50 grams.

 

For comparison, one of my hens is very, very much overweight. She has fat pads not only on her chest, but also on her lower abdomen and across the back. She is about 7 1/2 inches long, which is average to slightly above -average length for them, and weighs 52 grams. I have done about everything imaginable to bring her weight down, and have been marginally successful, as she did weigh in at 56 grams at one time. I will post her picture so you will know what I think of when I hear of a 52 gram budgie. And please don't tell me how awful it is that she was allowed to get this big. It was not because she eats too much, and I am not going to go into it.

 

 

 

She is a bit fluffy in this picture, but is still definitely a big bird. Can you imagine what she would look like with an extra 100 grams packed on her? Multiply her size already by 3 to get a 150 gram budgie. I think she would explode before she could gain that much. All kidding aside, she would most probably die before she could gain that much weight. She would probably die before she could add even another 15 grams. She certainly wouldn't be able to fly or move around much at all, which thankfully she can still fly amazingly well. She just chooses not to.

 

 

My other birds look fine, sometimes even thin, but if you palpate their bodies, you can tell they are all carrying some extra weight. You cannot always tell just by looking at a bird whether they are carrying too much weight. But if you can see that "spare tire" around the chest or abdomen, they most certainly are already past the "overweight" stage, no matter what the scale says.

I've been told that millet and honey sticks are fattening. Maybe remove that for now if your bird has access to either.

Hi Rainbow. I couldn't imagine a budgie at 180 grams. This is figures we have been told from birds in England.

 

Here is Ash at 74 grams.

 

He is a bit under the required length of 9.4 inches (240mm) 2003 Standard.

 

He is a good flyer and I wouldn't call him fat.

 

With the birds I have only one is below 40 grams.

 

My Webpage - go to Photos to see my birds.

 

The top row are all over 60 grams at time of the photo.

Oh, England... well okay then... (LOL I'm only kidding - no offense to those in Britain.)

 

I really like him, Daz. But he is also about 2" bigger than our little guys. He seems to have a little extra padding through the chest too. Not nearly as much as Sky though.

 

 

pavariangoo - they don't get much millet and have never had a honey stick. They only eat organic foods with very little seed, so that isn't the problem. But thanks for the reply.

(Laughing out loud), I once gave Boris a honey seed stick, she stiffed it and wouldn't touch it!

I gave it to the aviary budgies, they all took a bite and abandoned it - I guess they told me what they thought of this sweet food!!

Well I can't say that honey sticks are in the diet either :bluebudgie:

This picture was taken earlier. Yue Liang is my biggest budgie coming in at 52g. :bluebudgie: She's just a big pet budgie. She's small in comparison to some Show birds i've seen. Oh please excuse the scruffiness. They are all molting heavily at the moment. and she just had corn. Although her face colour is molting in darker yellow.. almost golden compare to the rest of her body!

 

Beka is down a gram. I haven't given her much time to "lose" but she was looking a little smaller so I decided to put her on the scale. She is a bigger (longer) bird than my others so may never get down to 35 grams but I would like to see the fat pad near her vent gone.

Well, with my brand new scales I weighed Boris & she is 46 grams & 20cm long.

She is one of my smallest budgies but definately is not overweight and is as fast as the wind!

 

 

The two new birds are both 52 grams. And I wouldn't say fat either.

Goliath weighs 60 grams but some think he is a mixture of "english" and pet budgie and also he has paired up with a small size goldenface type2 girl

Know to me he looks a bit thin in that shot. But thats good. I'd love to see a front shot Karen. His shoulders look powerful. Pity you don't have a boof head female to pair him with. He needs some work o his head.

Edited April 24, 200619 yr by daz

Actually I think the thin look is probably what they are supposed to look like. They should be a very streamlined bird, as in the wild any excess weight would be the difference between life and lunch.

Well, with my brand new scales I weighed Boris & she is 46 grams & 20cm long.

She is one of my smallest budgies but definately is not overweight and is as fast as the wind!

 

 

 

When measuring length where do you measure from - what part of head? and to tip of tail?

Measure from the top of the head to tip of the tail (or as close as their wriggling will allow)

okay. Thanks!

All budgie seed mixes contain millet (and white proso millet is usually the first ingredient) so even though you don't offer it in treat form, she has access to this type and may be eating more of it than you realize. The difficult thing about seed mixes is that budgies pick and choose what they want to eat and often leave the rest. With so many budgies sharing a cage, it's impossible to tell who is eating what out of the seed mix.

 

 

I'm confused. I've been researching budgie nutrition all afternoon. One of my budgies, who is slightly pudgy at 39 g, has liver disease.

 

What is particularly wrong with eating millet? Millet only contains 4% fat, about the same amount as all of the grains. Every source says it is the most highly nutritious of the grains.

 

Given that she refuses to eat pellets, veggies, or fruit, what would be the best thing to feed her?

 

She shares a 23" by 32" by 32" cage with three other budgies, and I've been feeding them kaytee fiesta (they ignore the veggies), Kaytee Advantage original (they REALLY ignore that) and kaytee molting and conditioning supplement, which they scarf, and an oil supplement at 2 drops per 2 tbsps of food, which I just stopped. One bird, not the one who is sick, will eat small quantities of red pepper.

 

Does oat groats actually cause them to gain weight more than do millet and canary grass seed?

 

The breeders seem to recommend feeding mostly canary grass seed and a variety of millet, with a small quantity (2-5% each) of oats and oil seeds. Most of them seem to recommend adding an oil and oily vitamin supplement.

 

Yours,

Dora Smith

Villandra (Dora), welcome to the forums.

 

Finding the right nutritional mix for our budgies seems to be a challenge sometimes if they are fussy. I've tried pellets - two kinds - an my budgies have been chucking them. I even tried grinding them up and mixing with the seed. They love veggies and get lots of those. Broccoli and romaine are there favourites. As for seed, I just bought a bag of canary and finch seed to mix in. I'll see how they make out on that. I really only have the one budgie that is 'overweight' but more than anything I want to give them a healthy variety. Regarding oats, if you see my post on the canary seed - I was asking if there was anything in it that would be harmful to budgies - someone mentioned that oats are like chocolate bars to budgies. I'm trying different things to see what works for my budgies.