Budgies and cats....

Re: Budgies and cats....

Carli Dodd — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 12:15:50 GMT

Hey Phrin,

I think the blinking and squinting thing stems from the instinctive fear of something with forward facing eyes. So if it's working and helping to develop trust with Paddy then that's good.

With regards to diet, budgies cope a lot better than the bigger parrot species with a high seed content diet, I guess this is because the majority of the diet in the wild is grass seed. Obviously seed is lacking in a lot of the essential nutrients so we do need to encourage him to try other things, or if you wanted you could try to convert him onto a pelleted diet, Harrisons high potency superfine would be the one I would go for. Conversion can be tricky but there are things that you can try to encourage him. If you want to give it a go feel free to call me and I can run thru it with you. As for fruit and veg I would persevere with offering things, stick with 'meaty-yellow' and 'leafy-green' things. You could also try putting a sprig of parsley in the cage and sprinkling seed over it, so that he has to forage thru the parsley to get the seed, often this will encourage them to eat bits of the greens.

Also you are his flock so if you are seen to be eating things he may be more curious and willing to try them.

Great to hear that you've got the 'step-up' command sorted already, very impressive!

Let me know if I can be of any further assistance!

Re: Budgies and cats....

Phrin Vernon RVN — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 22:29:16 GMT

Hi Carli

Thanks for the post! I'm now keeping kitties as far away from Paddy (the budgie) as possible! I've thought about the sylvester and tweetie pie set up, but his cage isn't really suited, and I am rubbish at DIY so would be constantly worrying about it falling!

Currently he is in the living room during the day, and the kitchen at night. He is still quite nervous, but we are making progress! He has learnt 'Step up', and so is now getting let out to fly at least twice a day. Although he did shout at me tonight when I went to put him back in his cage

I have read that blinking and squinting at them helps to let them know you are not a threat.... do you know if this is right? Seems to work with him, as he half closes his eyes back at me when I do it!

Also, any ideas on how to get him to eat a more varied diet? He ignores all fruit, veg, bread etc that I offer him, but always eats plenty of seed....Is it just the case that he doesn't realise these other thing are food yet?

Sorry for all the questions - I'm new to bird ownership - can you tell?

Thanks! Phrin x

Re: Budgies and cats....

Carli Dodd — Sat, 02 Oct 2010 09:28:38 GMT

Without shooting you down too quickly....

Cats are predators, budgies are prey species. If you want to have supervised 'interaction' or at least have the cat in the same room as the budgie you need to make the budgie feel totally secure in his cage as this should be his safe haven, so to speak. I would therefore not allow the cat too close to the cage and definitely not allow it on the top. A birds natural reaction to a stressful situation is to fly away (think fight/flight response) but in this case as your budgie cant fly away he has to chose the 'fight' option, which is biting the cat.

You may find that if you have the budgie as high above the cat as possible you can have them in the room at the same time (we have a client who calls this her 'sweetie pie Sylvester' set up! where she suspends the cage from the ceiling and the cat stays on the floor or sofa).

Good to hear that you've got him on your hand already!

Hope that helps, let me know how you get on