Bonded budgies

Question
Hi can anyone help me tell weither my budgie's George Jr and Lumina are pair bonded cuz in june i am hopeing for them to produce offspring we are in may now and they have been together for i think four months now. They are both a year old. When they sleep there together,they sir together and they preen each other and George feeds her by regurgetation and when they preen there selves they move away from each other. They have the cuttel fish bone, that pink block thing and two water feeders and a huge seed feeder they get corn and strawberrys. I have the nest box wich has sawdust in and dry grass and i dont know wich one goes in it but one does cuz all the sawdust gets moved around.

Jodie

Answer
Hi, Jodie,

For some reason, the person you sent your original request to could not answer.  I picked your question up in the question pool.

When the male regurgitates to the female, this is a sign of pair-bonding.  When they are ready, they will most likely use the nesting box.  However, you need to remove any substrate from the bottom of the box.  Most keets to not want any nesting material in their nesting box.  If you don't remove it, they may never nest in it.  Saw dust is bad anyhow because the particles are too small.  Once babies arrive, you'll want to put something like pine shavings in the bottom of the box to help keep the female and the babies clean of their feces.  You'll also need to clean out the nesting box often once babies arrive so they stay clean and dry of their feces.  

Seed is a poor diet for any parrot.  Seed is high in fat and low in nutritional value.  Before your birds start to breed, you need to switch them to a healthier diet.  They can't produce healthy babies if they are not healthy themselves.  In addition, soft foods are easier for the parents to feed to their offspring.  Limit the amount of corn you feed....too much corn binds with calcium in the body and can leave your birds calcium deficient....something you don't want to happen with breeding birds.  Strawberries are good.  Try some cooked brown rice with veggies mixed in....all my parrots love this soft food mix.  Provide as much food variety as you can offer your birds and that they will consume.  Birds won't eat foods they don't recognize, so just keep offering new foods every day until they try what you offer.  

Chrys