Dear Parrots magazine,
Breeding budgies
When I was younger and living at home with my parents we always had a budgie in a cage like many people did way back in the old days, but now I am married and have a family, the thought of budgerigars is still well ingrained in my mind. It is quite interesting that when I took my young son and daughter to a garden centre a couple of years ago, they went straight to where the budgies were. I did think this was quite interesting, but they seem to have the same interest as I did when I was at their age.
As time went by, they both kept saying they would like a budgie and of course, mum and dad always give in. So needless to say, we ended up with two budgies in our house and my two children love them and did spend a lot of time looking after them, which I thought was very positive.
To cut a long story short, the budgerigar interest developed and now we have three pairs in an aviary in our garden, which has been a great source of enjoyment, not only for my children, but for both myself and my husband, and surprisingly, he seems to be one that is more interested and keen to take up breeding them.
Interestingly, both our son and my husband are now seriously into breeding budgerigars and take little interest in football or rugby, which a lot of their friends do, so we do seem to be different as a family. Although I subscribe to this magazine, I find the smaller parrots and parakeets more interesting than the larger species, and think it is a shame we don’t see more articles on budgerigars. I think they are one of the most underestimated little parakeets and I do hope we see more information about them in the future.
Susan Dobbs, by email