BUDGIES - Meet Indie & Hermes

We apologise for not posting a blog in a few weeks, it has been quite busy lately. However, we do have a few blogs in the works and will be posting them over the next couple of weeks. 

For this blog we have decided to introduce you to two other animals in our family. Meet our 2 budgies:

·       * Indie (short for Indiana) is a two year old budgie who looks exactly like Tweetie Bird. He found us two years ago while we were living in Canberra. When Steph drove into her carport after coming home from work, he was sitting on the windowsill of the garage as a tiny baby budgie. He immediately jumped onto Lukas’ shoulder. We went around the neighbourhood asking if anyone had lost a budgie; no one had. So we decided to welcome Indie into our home. As a young budgie we could not tell whether he was male or female so we gave him the name Indiana as this is a unisex name. Later the cere (coloured area above his beak) turned blue so we knew he was a boy (female budgies have pink/tan coloured ceres). 

     *Hermes is our other two year old budgie who we adopted as a friend for Indie. Hermes was meant to be a female (we got him off a friend’s Aunty who had a lot of baby budgies needing new homes). After awhile we realised he was in fact a boy (which Indie probably knew the entire time). They are best friends and never fight. 

So now you have met these two beautiful budgies, we will be including them throughout our blog posts on TED – Animals. 

 

Today we thought we would discuss providing budgies with the nutrients they need outside of the regular and natural seed mix they get every day; in the form of green vegetables. About three times a week we put a few leaves of baby spinach in their cage which is consumed in minutes. Baby spinach is high in a lot of nutrients both beneficial to budgies and humans; such as sodium, potassium, Vitamin A, it also has dozens of anti-inflammatory and anti-cancer properties. 

Occasionally, we will also use broccoli, lettuce, spinach which have similar nutritional value to baby spinach. Green vegetables are as important to budgies as they are to humans due to the high mineral content found in them. These mineral nutrients are not as numerous as those found in seeds, and therefore if only fed seeds a budgie’s mineral levels will deplete over time. 

You will know if you are feeding your budgie too many green vegetables as they will tend to get diarrhoea. If this happens, just reduce the amount of greens you feed them. 

The only green vegetable budgies CANNOT eat is avocado which is toxic to their system. Avocado is toxic to a lot of animals and therefore should be avoided entirely in their diet. Generally in the case of budgies and other parrots they will get asphyxia, with death occurring 12-24 hours later. This does not happen in all cases, but why would you risk it? The reason this is toxic is because all parts of an avocado (skin, flesh, leaves, pit, etc) contain a fungicidal toxin called Persin which budgies and other animals cannot tolerate/digest in their system. 

Until next blog post, have an amazing week :)

Love & Light xox