Budgie Cages

When housed in captivity a budgies home is his/her bird cage. So how do we keep our budgerigars happy in their home? This page is a simple list of basic requirements for your budgie cage. If you are interested in keeping your budgie really happy, and wish to create an ideal home for them, please visit our bird cage ideas page.

Budgie cage size:
Because budgies are very active and energetic birds I would recommend at least a minimum cage size of 18 inches long by 18 inches wide. This is a good cage size for one or two pet budgies who are allowed to fly free for a few hours a day.

An ideal cage size would be at least 30 inches long so the budgies can enjoy more room to fly around and explore.

Female budgies can fight:
Even if you have a larger cage you must be careful when placing several female budgies together. If they find they don’t get along with each other they can do some serious harm to each other! If you spot trouble between them it is best to separate them before you end up with a couple of featherless budgies.

Food and Water:
This should be a given! We can’t exist without food and water and budgies are no different! Every cage should have at least a place for seed and water. There are a variety of different budgie seed mixes on the market; I would suggest visiting our diet page to make sure your current seed choice meets the requirements for your budgie.

Something to chew:
We cover this more extensively in our bird cage ideas page, but budgies (in particular females) love to chew on things. In the wild, budgies lay their eggs in any cavity they can find, and if needed the female budgie will gnaw the cavity into the right shape, this is why female budgies have more of a tendency to chew things than males.
To cater for this need to chew and sharpen their beaks, it’s recommended that you add something like mineral-blocks (ideally enriched with iodine) or cuttlebone (cuttlefish) or even soft pieces of wood to your budgies cage to help them satisfy these needs.

Perches:
It is not unusual to see a perch size around that of a lead pencil, these are actually the direct cause of a lot of foot problems for budgies. Conditions such as cramping, sore feet broken toe nails and even broken joints can be drastically reduced by having a perch size of at least half an inch wide for your feathered friend.

Perches should ideally be natural branches!

And there you have it, a nice little simple bird cage for your budgerigar. If you are keen to take this a step further, please visit our bird cage ideas page for more information and ideas to keep your bird as happy as possible!