What do lively and easily tamed budgerigars eat? Can they talk? How long do they live?
The budgerigar is a bird of the order Psittaciformes, family Psittaculidae, also known as the "jiaofeng." It is a small climbing parrot species, native to the inland regions of Australia, with a lively temperament that makes it easy to tame, and it is one of the most popular pet birds in China. So what do budgerigars eat? Can they talk? How long do they live?
The budgerigar's plumage is extremely colorful, made up of many different colors, with many fine black bars on the head and back. Their legs are relatively short. They are a species that mainly lives in grasslands and forest edges. There are many artificially bred budgerigar varieties, with colors ranging from light to dark: white, cream white, yellow, bright green, dark green, olive green, gray green, sky blue, cobalt blue, dark blue, light violet, violet, gray, charcoal black.
What do budgerigars eat?
1. Staple food: Budgerigars like to eat some shelled feed, and daily feeding should be based mainly on millet, foxtail millet or eggs. Oyster shell powder or bone meal can also be kept as a regular feed. Some green vegetables should be fed every day. A whole piece of cuttlebone can also be placed in the cage for them to eat freely. These are all foods that are good for the budgerigar's health. Budgerigars tolerate coarse feed, and fine feed should not be fed too much, so as to avoid fat deposition that affects egg laying and breeding.
2. Water: Giving budgerigars some tap water is enough. Never feed them beverages, as beverages contain sugar, which will harm the budgerigar.
3. Nutrients: Appropriately supplement calcium for budgerigars; it is better to supplement during the estrus period, because if calcium is not supplemented during this period, it will cause a decline in the bird's egg production and will also harm the budgerigar's body. During calcium supplementation for budgerigars, you can also appropriately pair it with some health sand, assisted by eggshells to supplement some trace elements; this is a relatively good food. Budgerigars also quite like to eat it.
How long do budgerigars live?
The average lifespan of a budgerigar is 7 to 10 years, and it will be longer with careful raising.
Can budgerigars talk?
Most small parrots in the order Psittaciformes can talk, such as budgerigars, cockatiels, and small parrots, and their speaking ability is quite strong. This is because birds in the order Psittaciformes have vocal cords and sound-producing organs that are the same, making them relatively suited to producing various sounds.
In fact, budgerigars could imitate human speech in the early stages of domestication, and many records show that they have a very strong imitative ability. It is said that in the early 20th century, a budgerigar kept by someone escaped, and because it recited the family's phone number all along the way, it was caught and sent back. Now this ability has clearly declined, and it is already difficult to see budgerigars that can talk, possibly because under artificial breeding the reproductive pressure has decreased and the bird's imitative ability has degenerated.
Early budgerigars had a stronger imitative ability than those now, and were relatively able to talk. But most budgerigars now cannot talk, said to be because generation-by-generation breeding plus changes in living conditions have led to the degeneration of this ability. However, there is still a portion of budgerigars that can talk (the proportion is not large).
How do you teach a budgerigar to talk?
1. Preparation before teaching
First, choose a subadult male budgerigar, for two reasons:
1) Subadult individuals (those after leaving the nest but before sexual maturity) are relatively more likely to accept new things, so the success rate is relatively high.
2) Male budgerigars are much stronger than female budgerigars in imitative vocal ability (imitating the calls of other birds and some sounds, including speech).
Second, the bird to be trained cannot be kept in the same room as birds of other species (except for teacher birds), and the bird being taught to talk must be kept in a separate cage.
It is widely believed that teaching a parrot to talk requires twisting its tongue, but this is a misconception that only harms the parrot. In fact, whether or not the tongue is twisted has no scientific basis or significant effect on a parrot learning human speech. This is because the sound-producing organ of most birds is the “syrinx” located at the lower end of the trachea where the bronchi branch, and sound is produced by the contraction of attached muscles, whereas human vocal cords are at the upper end of the trachea.
Teaching methods
1) Time: Early morning is best, because birds are most active in calling in the early morning, and at this time the bird has not yet eaten its fill, so the teaching effect is better.
2) Environment: It must be quiet, with no noisy sounds or talking, otherwise it easily distracts the bird and it may also learn sounds it should not learn. Therefore, it is best to choose a quiet indoor place for teaching.
3) Content: You must persist in teaching the budgerigar to talk every day, and teach it phrase by phrase, starting with simple words, such as “hello,” “goodbye,” and so on, and you cannot teach two sentences at the same time. When teaching it to say words, the pronunciation must be clear and not vague, so that the words the bird learns are relatively clear. (A commonly used method is to use a myna, a hill myna or a common starling that can already talk as a teacher bird, letting the budgerigar learn from it; this can save a lot of manpower and is relatively fast. If you do not have a teacher bird, you can choose a repeater or teach it yourself, and the effect is just as good.)
Because of individual differences among birds, not every budgerigar can successfully learn to talk. The success rate for budgerigars learning to talk is about 22% (calculated based on budgerigars that have been learning to talk for about a year), so you should be mentally prepared for failure.