Life spans

Question
I feed my tiels & budgies sun-thing-speacil pellets and seeds, I let them out for an hour of two daily, I mist them every three days, they also get fresh vegtables, spray-millet (once a week), treats, cuttle bones and minarle blocks, They have lots of toys to play with and get daily attetion from me. If I continue doing what I am doing for them  would they live a longer life?

Answer
Yes, it sounds like you're doing well by them.  The number one cause of death in birds is illness related to poor diet, so one of the most important things you can do to increase your birds' lifespans is feed them a good diet.  It sounds like you're doing that.  The fresh veggies are especially important--many people don't bother with that, but veggies have vitamins and nutrients the birds can't get from the seed or pellets.  Toys and attention are important, too, to make them happy and stress-free, as well as for exercise--too many budgies are obese.

So keep doing what you're doing and they should live lives as long as their genetic makeup allows.  Unfortunately, budgies are especially prone to cancer from genetic causes, due to poor breeding, specifically too much inbreeding.  There's nothing an owner can do about this but what you're doing - make sure they're happy and healthy so their bodies can fight off the cancer as long as possible.

It's unfortunate, but the average lifespan of these little guys is only about 4-8 years.  With proper care and diet, and if they don't have the wrong genes, their normal lifespans should be 10-15 years.

- Lara
psitta@yahoo.com