Do Budgies Form Good Pets For Kids?

Budgies are small cute and inexpensive pets that chatter a lot and are good pets for children. They are not a low maintenance pets, live from 5 to 7 years and for a maximum of 15 years and require a serious commitment both from you and the kid’s point of view.

A child can have a budgie as a pet as long as he/she is willing and is old to understand pet birds and to take care of them. Also the child needs to be patient to work with the pet budgie and you as a parent are ready to look after it once he/she goes to college. You need to teach your kid how to look after the bird.

Firstly teach a child that a pet budgie is not like a cat and dog that roams about freely and warms up to a new family; pet birds like budgies need to be handled very softly and carefully as they could startle or get frightened easily. You need a lot of patience in handling pet birds and the child is to be made to understand what proper behavior in the pet bird’s company is.

Keeping a budgie as a pet means taking care to clean its cage regularly and to change its food, water and cage lining. Children are to be taught all the foods that can be given to the pet and those that are to be avoided. Food and water bowels are to be cleaned everyday and filled; in case your child cannot take up the responsibility, be prepared to take it up to care well for the pet bird.

Next budgies are intelligent birds that need to be stimulated well to avoid boredom. This means putting up perches in the cage as well as providing them toys to be well entertained. Children need to be taught also to rotate the toys as this would make the pet budgie stimulated and keep it happy.  

It is best to remember that unless the budgie is worked with, it will not become tame or talk and may wind up doing nothing more than sitting in its cage; this is unadvisable for the child as well as the pet bird. You need to hand-train your pet budgie in the child’s presence; since some budgies are nippy and behave unpredictably, it is best to train the budgie first before exposing him to the child. Once he is comfortable with your handling and socialization, you could expose him to your child strictly under your supervision.

Last, but most important ensure your child takes the budgie out of the cage daily for socialization; this would be a joint activity for you and your kid until it gets comfortable with the handling. It would teach your child a good lesson in proper human/budgie interaction. Making socialization time a parent-child activity would help to teach proper interaction. When the budgie and the child learn to play with each other, you can relax, but still be ready to supervise in an emergency.

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