Parakeet Dumps her Food

User Question
Great site and thank you for the wonderful information to help me get started with my budgies.

My two budgies have been together for about 3 months now. The second budgie is not the aggressive one. The second budgie is eating quite a lot in the past 2 weeks. After refilling her (?) food bowl she pushes and dumps over her food dish and all the food falls to the bottom of the cage. She does not touch her partners bowl.

Strange behavior or just normal?

Lisa's Answer
Parakeets are very playful and acrobatic, and love getting attention. It definitely sounds like your parakeet is eating plenty of food, so she doesn't need any more. She therefore turns her food into a big toy that makes exciting noises as the seed spills all over the place :)

I don't know that I'd exactly encourage this, it's a waste of good food. Instead, I might start giving her a new toy, or other food she can play with - bits of lettuce, corn, etc. That way she can have her play fun and get things other than seeds into her, without just dumping all her seed on the floor.

All Questions in this Category

List of Parakeet Question Categories

NOTE: Because of the huge volume of incoming questions, I no longer answer them one by one. Instead, we have created a live, free Parakeet Forum which is very active, where people are online 24 hours a day to help you with your parakeet related questions. If you have any questions about parakeet care - or simply want to share your parakeet stories and photos - please join us!

Parakeet Forum