Adopting an Unsocialized Parakeet

User Question
I checked out your site from searching on AOL for parakeet info. More infomative than most sites, so thanks! If I may ask you a question...we bought a house in Big Pine Key & one of the conditions was that the 4 yr old male budgie comes with it. Being animal lovers it was not a problem.

The bird has not been handled or very well socialized with humans and used to have a female companion that died. Since we have taken over he has gotten used to us & I interact with him all the time and he is getting better but I don't think he would ever be as social as a hand raised baby. Should we get him a female companion? (I am home quite a bit for I have a home based business) And if so should we try to get him one his age?

We will eventually build an outside aviary too. We need to get him a larger cage, can you recommend somewhere that won't cost an arm & a leg?

Thanks so much for any assistance you can provide!

Lisa's Answer
Wow, what a good doobie you are! You're taking quite wonderful care of a parakeet that the previous owners were abandoning!

I'm a huge fan of the Florida Keys (and those cute little key deer!!) so it is a great environment for a budgie to live. It sounds like this budgie was more of a "parakeet with parakeet friends" than a socialized pet that thought of humans as its flock. Which is fine of course, but probably means the keet is lonely now even though you are home with it. It has been trained to think of other keets as its friends, and that humans are just food-bringers.

It's great that you're taking the time to be patient with him, but I do think that getting another parakeet to keep him company is a good idea. I work from home too (as you might imagine from the websites I run) and the 3 parakeets I have are in the room with me all the time. Even so, I have 3 parakeets so they can play with each other while I type and work on my websites. They fly over to me sometimes, but at other times they warble amongst themselves. Especially if you're going to build an outside aviary (which I imagine they will LOVE!!) they will want other birds to fly around with.

So yes, I'd say to get him a new friend. The age doesn't really matter, just having a fellow flier will probably be quite enough for him. I really don't know about where to buy an aviary from - usually the cheapest place is a local place so there isn't any shipping costs. So I would poke around the local bird shops and ask them, undoubtedly they'll know of someone who builds aviaries. They're very popular down in the Keys.

Enjoy! I dream of living in the keys, so know that every morning that you wake up, you're somewhere that others up here in the frozen tundra of the north wish they were living :) :)

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