Small Pet Birds
What kind of small birds do we have in NZ?
From what I have seen on various social media groups and what my customers tell me, the most common small pet birds in NZ are budgies.
Budgies are originally Australian, but there are now English budgies and they're available as pets in just about every country. There are so many mutations (colour variations) of budgies, they're probably the most interbred bird our there. Some people have them as pets, some have them as 'show birds', some are kept in large aviaries.
Other small parrot that we may get as a pet in New Zealand is lovebirds.
And for non-parrot small bird variety, there are finches and canaries.
Small bird diet requirements
There are no specific dietary requirements for small birds other than we know they should not be fed only seed. They should be given a good pellet, fruit/vegetables for extra variety and foraging opportunities, and seeds can be used for training or treats. To be effective, high quality pellets need to comprise at least 80% of the diet.
Parrot Treats family
Piggy was the first budgie and the first bird I ever had. I called him Piggy because when I got him home from the store and gave him some food, he completely climbed into the feeding dish and sat in there eating it all.
Piggy was a wonderful bird. I kept his cage open and every day at 3 pm like clockwork, he'd come out and do a couple of loops around the room, then go back to his cage.
We also had Shataney briefly - she came with Smudge. She was a lutino budgie.
And now we have Lemmy, a yellow greenie budgie. We called him after the drink - Lemmy the Lemonade. Lemmy was found in 2020 on a street and brought into a local vet. The vet contacted this page as they saw I was in Lower Hutt and we all were about to go into lockdown and they could not leave the budgie there for several weeks alone. We took him home and tried posting on various social media groups looking for the owner. Then, after the lockdown ended, we went to various places where he was found to see if there were any posters around looking for him. After a while, with no success, we gave him the name and he's become one of our family.
I suspect he was not a pet, but maybe from a breeding aviary or something like that and the owner let them all go, or maybe they got out by accident. Lemmy loves playing with toys and, surprising to any parrot owner I'm sure, he loves vegetables - he will demolish a baby spinach leaf in one sitting and particularly likes the stalk parts.
Piggy ate Harrison's Lifetime Fine, but Lemmy refuses to eat anything other than Mash, and only Lifetime Mash at that. I've tried to get him to eat TOP's and Harrison's pellets but he won't touch them. He won't even eat High Potency Mash - perhaps because Lifetime mash is heavily millet based, whereas High Potency has more corn? But at least he loves vegetables! I also give Lemmy some millet with his breakfast (just a few small balls).
