Breeding budgies

Question
Hello, thanks for your help, Well I'd love to handfeed the chicks and I do have time to do so so probly will be handfeeding. I just don't want something that will give me a headache everytime I come to my room, how do I select two healthy babies from a whole group & how do you tell males from females in 8 week old chicks?



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Followup To
Question -
I want to get a pair of budgies for breeding but have some questions first.

Will a pair of budgies be loud and anoying? the chicks make noise also I know,  

how big must the cage be?

if a male/female breeding pair would be too loud would two hens kept as pets be quiter?
Answer -
Hello.  Thanks for posting your questions.  I've answered these same questions several times in the past.  Are you the same person asking them over and over again?  

Depends on what your definition is of loud and annoying.  In my opinion, a pair of budgies are not loud and annoying.  They do make some amount of noise, of course. I'd be more worried if they didn't make any noise!

Chicks don't make hardly any noise until they are 2-3 months old, except when begging for food, but this depends on each individual bird.  Chicks are too busy getting familiar with the world to make much noise!

The cage size depends on whether you have a nestbox on the inside or outside of the cage and what other objects you have inside the cage, such as toys, feed dishes, etc.  Also, will you be pulling the baby budgies for handfeeding when they are 7-10 days old?  Minimum cage size allows the adult/parent budgies to fly freely back and forth between the perches inside the cage without either of their wings touching anything or their head or tail touching anything, and accommodates everything else that also needs to be inside the cage, such as the nestbox, toys, dishes, perches, etc.  If you will NOT be handfeeding the babies and allow the parents to raise the chicks to fledging/weaning, you'll also have to take into consideration that 6-8 budgies will occupy the cage.

Hens chirp and sometimes can make as much noise as males...it just depends on the personality of the individual birds!  If you have a situation where you can't have pets that make any noise, then you might want to reconsider having parrots as pets because they all make noise to a certain extent.  And my definition of a noisy bird and your definition could be 2 different things!
 
Chrys  

Answer
Hello again.  

You have a lot to learn if you want to handfeed baby parrots!  I'd start learning now if I were you!

Loudness/noisiness in a parrot is something that cannot be predicted in advance because every bird is different, except to generalize for certain species.

Healthy babies will be active, eyes will look bright and clear, they should be fairly curious about things in their environment, there should not be any fluid/crustiness, etc., around the nose/coming out of the nose, no messy "vents," feathers should look nice and healthy and be in place, a healthy bird will not be sitting puffed up on a perch (unless it is sleeping), a healthy baby will not be "perching" on the bottom of the cage (unless the birds are contained in a type of space where being on the bottom would be normal for that space, like a plexiglass enclosure), a handfed baby should come to you easily and readily, baby budgies will have black lines across their foreheads until they are about 2 months old.  You'll be able to tell a healthy baby bird from one that isn't healthy if you interact with them some.  Sometimes it's best to let the baby pick you instead of you picking the baby.  You should play with all the babies in the group until you both "discover" each other.  You'll know when this happens.  If there's any doubt in your mind, don't buy at that time and/or look elsewhere.

It's nearly impossible to tell males from females in 8 week old budgies unless you are an experienced breeder of budgies.  Their cere colors, which identifies males from females, is still evolving until they are about 3 months old (sometimes later).  You can do a Google search using the phrase "sexing baby budgies" or "sexing budgies" or "sexing parakeets" and review websites of people experienced in sexing baby budgies at a young age in order to learn how to sex them young.  I've never had much success doing this with babies less than 3 months of age, and I've been breeding budgies/parakeets for over 16 years!  Some color mutations are very difficult to sex even in the adult birds.  You need to research this a lot before attempting to buy baby budgies so you'll know what to recognize.  Basically though, male ceres are completely blue and females ceres are any other color (in an adult or baby older than 3/4 months).  Some female's ceres can also be blue, but their ceres are outlined in white.  Can be tricky sometimes!

Chrys