Expert: Chrys Meatyard - 5/29/2007

Question
QUESTION: My budgie is about 7 weeks old.  I have had him for the past two weeks.
He stays up late.  Till about 10:00.  Then he wakes up at between 5-6:00 am.
What can I do?
Also, my budgie seems to pick up his veggies from his fruit cup and throw them down to the bottom of the cage.  What does this mean?

ANSWER: Hi, Sitah.

When you want your budgie to go to sleep, you need to remove all light sources available to your bird and cover the cage so your bird can sleep in darkness (use of a night light is usually helpful in the room so your bird doesn't become disoriented if he becomes frightened during the night).  Don't uncover your bird's cage/allow light sources into the room in the morning until you want him to get up.  However, you must realize that birds normally wake up when the sun starts coming up early in the day.  If there is a window in the room where the bird stays, you may need to put a dark covering of some sort over the window so your bird sleeps longer in the morning.

Your bird throws veggies from his cup because he doesn't like them (or doesn't want them in the fruit cup).  Maybe the bird was expecting fruit to be in the cup instead of veggies.  Try offering your budgie cooked brown rice with veggies, scrambled eggs, etc., mixed in.

Chrys

---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: BUt he was eating veggies from the fruit cup.  All of a sudden he is picking it up and throwing it down. Could it possibly mean anything else?

Answer
Hi again, Sitah.

I can't read the bird's mind, but based on my 18+ years of experience with parrots, when a bird does this with its food, it either doesn't want the food in that particular dish or it doesn't like the food that is in the dish.  Even if he was fine with it before, he doesn't like it now for whatever reason!

Chrys