Playtime & the age of Budgies & Cage sizes

Question
I'm about to get a Budgie and I have a lot of questions. The Budgie I'm gonna get is seven weeks old and I was wondering if that is a good age, because I keep reading about people who have budgies around that age that are perfectly fine, but those people may be breeders.
Also, I was wondering about a good size for a cage. The budgie will be a male, if that makes any difference. And when I read about the cage size, people always say "That will be a good size if he has 30 minutes of playtime each day" or something so what exactly is playtime? I was planning on taking him out of the cage to play, but I'sd like to know if there is something special I should do to make sure he gets a lot of exercise. Thanks!

Answer
Hi,
thank you for your question.
Budgies should be at least eight weeks old when they are sold, so I recommend waiting for another week until getting him. I also recommend getting two birds of about the same age. Budgies, as all parrots, are extremely social and need constant company. A single bird will get lonely when left alone even for an hour, but two bird can always interact with each other and they are a lot of fun to watch together. They are also much more active than single birds. It's a myth that two birds cannot be tamed and the second bird will learn the tame behaviour from the first one.It's true that two birds don't bond to you as closely as a single one, but in my opinion it's much better to have birds that are tame because they choose to be than one bird that's tame because he has no other choice.

A male can live with another male or a female without problems. They will only breed if you offer a nesting box, which I don't recommend because breeding budgies is not as easy as it sounds.

Clicker training is a very good and easy bird taming method and it's a mental excercise for them - they may not be as intelligent as big parrots, but they do love to play and do new things. Basically, you reward good behaviour with a specific sound and a small treat, so that the birds knows: "what I just did gets me a treat" and will repeat the behaviour. Since your budgie probably won't take treats form your hand in the beginning, out a small bowl in or on the cage where it can easily be reached by both of you, out a treat in it and then wait until the bird starts to eat the treat and click in the exact moment it picks up the treat. Repeat that a few times, then again on the next day. Most birds learn the combination click=treat very fast. Then you can start offering your hand to it, without a treat, just hold it as close as the bird is comfortable with. Leave it there for a few moments, then click and put the treat in the bowl. Repeat a few times and then on the next day you can put your hand a bit closer (or you just repeat the exercise at the same distance until you can come closer).
www.clickertraining.com has more info on this method, under Other Animals there's a bird section, including a very active mailing list.

The cage for two birds should be at least 30x15x20" long, wide and high. That's enough if the birds get several hours (four at least) of free flight, more is of course even better. If you can't offer them that much time outside their cage, the cage must be big enough so that they can at least fly a bit inside it. 40x20x20" long, wide and high is the minimum size then.

Offer them places to sit all over the room, not just on the cage. You can build budgie trees with branches from hazel, apple, pear, willow, poplar, alder, currant, beech, birch or maple. Anything you gather outside must be untreated and shouldn't grow near a busy street. Put the branches into a bucket or big vase filled with sand or plaster so that it doesn't topple over. A big branch can be hang from the ceiling for them to land on. They may not use it at first, budgies are always a bit frightened of new things, but soon they will discover it and use it. Here's a picture of my budgie trees:
http://i147.photobucket.com/albums/r294/jedediah667/Wellensittiche/wellensittich...
http://i147.photobucket.com/albums/r294/jedediah667/Wellensittiche/wellibaumausk...

I hope I was of some help to you
Jennifer