I have tried food bribery. I have continued this for awhile, but i have not had success. The youngest cockatiel, Kia, was not like that. She did not bite hard at all. I do not want our relationship to b like she has to whatever i want, and she can not do anything about it. How do i get a good relationship with her? The older female, Gracie, is not biting any more. My boy, Caspian, only bites when he is annoyed. He just does not want to be handled at all. Well, actually, none of them want to be handled. I feel sorry that they were handled badly; it is just really hard to get rid of their habits. I feel like i am not showing my budgies enough attention, spending so much time training my tiels. Thank u for all your help!

Hannah Warren

P.S. i think that both the female and male are normal grey mutation.

Birds that have been mistreated in the past can take a long time to learn to trust you. So just go slow, be patient, and keep trying in a low-key way. Keep the attention-paying sessions short since they don't actually want your attention, and let them see you playing with the budgies so they know that other birds enjoy your company.

What is your nestbox setup like? If the nestbox is attached to the outside of the cage, work on getting them used to you looking inside the nestbox and even putting your hand inside (be prepared to scoop the parent bird aside so they don't jump up and down on the eggs/babies trying to strike at you). Then when the babies hatch you'll be able to handle them while they're still small, so they will be tame and friendly with humans when they grow up. When the oldest baby is about a week old the parents will start spending most of their time outside the nest, and it will be easier to handle the babies then. But it's helpful if you can work with them even earlier than that.


When a bird isn't visual for a mutation but is carrying the gene for it, that's called a split. Most cockatiels have splits so it's possible to get babies that don't look like the parents. We'll have to wait and see what turns up in the nestbox!

My nestbox is INSIDE the cage....... is that bad? This morning when i was candling, i found a crack on the oldest egg. What do I do? Is it going to hurt the embroyo?
I could not see the embroyo when i was candling it. The egg is a week old. Has it died?

I will be really excited if the chicks look different then normal grey. Is it possible for one of them to be a pearl?


Hannah Warren

These are my budgies,
The one in the far back is Kiwi, the front one is Frost, and the one to the far left is Thunder. Can anyone tell me mutations and sexes?

You can seal the crack by putting a little bit of Elmer's glue on it. The biggest problem with cracks is excess water loss from the egg, but if this just happened today then there hasn't been enough time yet for things to go wrong. It's possible for the baby to hatch out just fine when cracks are repaired quickly. Wash your hands before you handle the egg to minimize bacteria, and put the glue only on the crack not all over the egg. The eggshell is porous, and air and water vapor needs to be able to pass through it.

Budgie mutations are a challenge for me so I need to do a little research before I answer lol.

A quick discussion on color. There are three sources of color in budgies:
1. Melanin pigment. It's black, and when it's on the outer layer of the feather it looks black (if there's not very much of it, it will look grey). But melanin in the core of the feather can look like a completely different color.
2. Psittacin pigment, which is yellow.
3. Structural color. Some feathers have a spongy layer between the inner core and the outer layer, which plays tricks with the light and makes black melanin look like blue, green, or some other color.
3 1/2. This isn't what people normally mean when they talk about structural color, but it is a sort of structural color. The material that the feather is made of looks white when no pigment is present.

All mutations in budgies are caused by changing the normal pattern in one of these color sources.

Kiwi is pied. There are three different pied mutations in budgies and I think she's probably dominant pied. The pied mutation removes the melanin from some feathers but not from others. So instead of green feathers you see yellow in some places, and some of the black markings disappear. Kiwi is probably a girl. Dominant pieds have normal cere colors. An adult male would have a dark blue cere (like Thunder). With adult females, the color can range from whitish to light blue to tan, and the color might change depending on her hormone level.

Thunder has more than one mutation. He has the Blue mutation which removes all the yellow pigment (Green minus yellow gives you blue). He also has the grey mutation (aka greygreen) which gets rid of the spongy layer in the feather so you see the natural color of the melanin. It looks grey not black because the melanin on the breast is in the feather core, so you're looking at it through the naturally white structural material that's still there. His blue cere says he's a boy.

Frost is a girl (tan cere) with more than one mutation. She has the blue mutation because all the yellow is gone. She also has a dilution mutation that reduces the melanin on the outer layer of the feather, so her head and wing markings look grey instead of black. She's probably clearwing not greywing; I think greywing would look darker than this. She also has one or two structural mutations but I'm not sure which one. More pictures with a variety of lighting conditions might make it clearer.

She might have the dark factor, which changes the structure to make the color look darker. A budgie with one dark factor is called cobalt, and she might have this. Or she might have the violet factor, which changes the structure to make the blue color look purplish. Or she might have both of them.

Gorgeous budgies BTW. I get so wrapped up in answering questions that I forget to mention stuff like that sometimes.

What kind of bedding are you using in the nestbox? Good bedding does a lot to improve your chances of success, and it helps prevent the eggs from rolling around and banging into each other. It's OK to have the nestbox inside the cage, but this usually makes it harder for the owner to check on it.

If your daddy bird is split to pearl he can have pearl daughters. To get pearl sons you need a visual pearl mother, which you don't have. Ditto for lutino and cinnamon, these are all sex-linked mutations with complicated inheritance rules. Pied and whiteface are ordinary recessive mutations, so both parents would have to be split to get babies in those colors. If you post pictures the parents we can look for signs of splits.

I am using a dishtowel for my nesting. here are the pics of the parents.

p.s thanks for taking the time to write all that!

here are more pictures of frost. how old should my baby tiels be before I sell them? what would be a good asking price?