Learn about breeding parakeets | The easy guide

Breeding parakeets is a task that will need some planning and organizing. It will also require some money and work. You need money or work to build or buy a parakeet nest box, which you can reuse later.

I will try to make it easy on you with important parakeet breeding information. It is more than just putting a male and a female into a cage together.

Photo courtesy of PietChi/flickr

I do need to tell you that breeding parakeets is something you really do not need to do in your small apartment. The main reason for this is that you need to provide extra care and some extra space to do this.

If you want another parakeet, they are so cheap nowadays that it would be much easier and cheaper for you just to buy or adopt one.

If for some reason you still want to do this, here are breeding parakeets basics to help you go through this.

First, you will need a couple of healthy parakeets of a certain age. If you have more than a couple of budgie parakeets and you are not breeding them to get certain color variations or genetic results, you can let the birds choose their mate by themselves.

If you want certain results than you should pick a couple on your own and put them in a separate cage. If you are choosing between several budgie parakeets, make sure you choose the best birds, healthy and strong ones, with nice looking, shiny feathers.

Now, having one couple of budgie parakeets does not guarantee you will have baby parakeets and that breeding will be successful. So, do not be disappointed if it does not work. You can always try next time.

Choosing a couple for breeding

The best bird for breeding would be:

• about one year old
• a good flier
• well fed but not obese
• looking healthy
• no obvious genetic problem

I know it might sound strange writing this, but do make sure you have a male and a female because it sometimes can be hard to determine sex of budgie parakeets.

When choosing budgies to breed, a good thing to check on are feathers. Shiny, nice looking feathers are usually a sign of good health condition.

I mentioned that the best age for breeding parakeets is if the birds are one year old. It does not mean that they can't have baby parakeets if they are older. Do not breed younger birds!

It would be great if you had a pair that are the same age. But even if there is some age difference, you can still try.

Determine the age of the bird

There are two ways you can do this.

First way would be by the stripes on his/her head. The stripes that go from cere (the bump on the top of the parakeet beak) to the back of the head disappear when the bird is about 4 to 5 months old.

Photo courtesy of Roy Drage, crdrage82003/Flickr

Second way is by looking at their eyes. A young bird has big black eyes but when it reaches 10 months the eye will get a white area circling the black.

One of the things to pay attention to is giving the birds some privacy. Breeding parakeets means providing the best conditions possible. Privacy is one of the things they would really appreciate.

The first signs of parakeets mating is the fact they become anxious. They land into the parakeet nest box more often. Unless you are spending all of your time watching them, you will probably miss the mating act itself.

Usually, the male will jump on the female early in the morning. You can see it happening if you are really patient and spend a lot of time with the birds, but as we already said, it would be the best to give some privacy to the birds.

If the mating was successful it will only take two days for you to see it. That is how long it takes for an egg to be created in the bird. And that is the time needed for you to see your parakeet egg laying.

If you haven't already, you better prepare a parakeet nest box, because you have some baby parakeets on the way.