one of the fantastic things about parakeets,and particularly budgies, is that they've been kept in captivity for about 200 yearsnow. but one of the bad things about it as well is that it means that these guys havealso been inbred a great deal. there's lots of color varieties; you can get them in greensand blues, and as you know with domestic animals such as dogs, you know, rottweilers and goldenretrievers have problems with hip dysplasia, and some of the bug-eyed dogs have dentalproblems, and you know, eye problems, because of inbreeding, and these birds do as well.what has come out from these birds is they're much more prone to cancers than many otherspecies of birds. they are both prone to reproductive cancers and fatty tumor cancers. and the typeof fatty tumor cancers that these birds get
can be stimulated by a high fat diet, so ifyou're feeding your parakeet a bunch of commercial bird seed you can almost guarantee that thatbird, at some point in its life, is going to end up with a fatty tumor, you know, somewhere.it could show up underneath their wings, it could show up in their neck, it can show upon their face, it can show up on their beaks. it can show up inside of their body cavity,where you can't even see it and it causes organ damage and pushes on their body organsand eventually causes death in these birds. so even if they outwardly look fine, it canmake them very sick. so you want to keep, make sure that you feed these guys a properdiet. the other thing that these guys are very prone to is mites. why a species is moreprone to mites than other species; the only
thing i can think of is that most of theseguys are bred in very high-density facilities, there's just so many birds coming in and outthat they're bringing in mites with them. you don't see it a lot in many of the biggerpsittacine species, like african greys and amazons, although it's not unheard of. anda lot of times these birds will have them at, when you get them from the pet store orthe breeder, and they won't manifest themselves as babies because it takes the mites sometime to do some damage to these birds. so it will be two, three, four years down theline when you start noticing they have a lot of scaliness on the beak, scaliness on theirlegs, their nails are overgrown, they basically just start looking very dingy. and you mightjust think that the bird's getting old, but
a lot of times it's just a hyper-growth ofthe skin, you know, trying to deal with the irritation that these mites are causing. ifyou suspect that your bird has mites, i recommend taking him to a veterinarian to get evaluatedfor it, where they can get proper medication. most of the over-the-counter medication forthese birds for mites are, if not toxic, then useless. so, if it's toxic enough to killthe mites it's likely to kill the bird; if it's not toxic enough to kill the mites thenit's generally not going to do anything at all. so most vets can do proper dosing foryour bird and make sure that it actually takes care of the problem. and if it's not mites,a veterinarian can also, you know, tell if it's not mites and make sure that he treatsfor why your bird is starting to look sickly
and dingy around, you know, its beak and legs.as far as the reproductive problems that these birds get, they're very, very high reproductivebirds, the females are constantly trying to lay eggs, sometimes even without a partner.they can get egg bound, so if you notice that your bird is sitting on the perch bobbingits tail, straining, looks fat, there's something protruding, from, you know, the vent regionof your bird, please take it to a vet; it could have an egg stuck inside, especiallyif you know that you have a female parakeet, so it's something to watch out for. it's notvery preventable, the biggest thing that you can help do to prevent reproductive problemsin these birds is make sure that they get 10 to 12 hours of sleep at night, so you wantto reproduce a constantly winter environment.
if these guys get, you know, 15, 16 hoursof daylight - and that can include artificial lights, you coming home and leaving your lightson until you go to sleep, you know, at 10 o'clock at night, those extended hours makethe birds think that it's summertime all the time and can make them reproductively active,more so. so if you think that, you know, you want to, you know, avoid these sorts of things,you know, either keep them uncovered until 10 o'clock in the day and then uncover them,or after, you know, it gets dark outside at six or seven o'clock at night you've got toput your birds to sleep.