English Budgie Weaning

Question
Hello... I have a 9 week old English Budgie that I brought to two feedings a day. A 6:00 am feeding and a 7:00 pm night feeding. He is eating well during the day, millet, broccoli, romaine lettuce,some seed. My question is, I would like to eliminate his morning feeding since this is the one he seems least interested inn (also I couldn't send him to bed without dinner) BUT.. I have never ever seen him drink water. My fear is that he will dehydrate if I stop the two feedings. He always has fresh water available to him when he is in his cage and on top of his cage when he is out,which is about 60% of the day.Are my fears unfounded and he will drink if he gets thirsty? or should I have tough love and eliminate the AM feeding? Am I enabling him and keeping him a baby too long? HELP! Thanks for your answer... Cindy

Answer
Hi Cindy,

Birds do not drink much, so it is possible that he is drinking and you just don't see it. And since he is still being hand-fed, he wouldn't need to drink as much because of that as well. I wouldn't be concerned about this, since usually it is not an issue. The only time I have seen it be an issue *with healthy birds* is if a bird is in a new environment and scared to death; too scared to go down to their food/water dishes. Or, if the water has had medicine or vitamins added to it. These can make the water discolored and taste different, so some birds don't like to drink it.

If your bird is not very interested in the AM feeding, then yes, by all means eliminate it. Baby birds will usually always take a little bit of formula if offered, but once they are ready to be weaned off of it, they will show you by not being as interested in the food as they used to be, or they eat a lot less than they used to.

With unweaned birds, it is always important to follow the advice of your avian vet closely. But, here are some articles that should help too:

http://www.birdsnways.com/wisdom/ww4e.htm

http://www.companionparrot.com/young%20&%20weaning.htm

I hope this helps.

-Maggie