Budgie Doesn't Want to Leave Cage

[smileah]

I'm a first time budgie owner. I grew up with cockateils. I got the budgie from a friend of a friend at 10 weeks old. He's about 3 months old now.

He seems to mostly like us and enjoy our attention. He hasn't mimicked us at all, but he will sort of tweet along with us and he'll come to the edge of the cage when we're near it. His cage has a bunch of toys, and he loves to play and chirp and hang upside down. He also likes it when we reach in and play with the toys with him.

The trouble comes when we try to take him out of the cage. There is a perch near the door, and when we put our finger there he will come over to it and step up. However, he then starts biting our fingers. It doesn't really hurt, but it seems pretty aggressive, and it seems similar to the way that he bites and plays with his toys. How do we train him that our fingers are not a toy?

When we move our hand toward the cage door, he will immediately jump off of it. The only way we've gotten him out of the cage is to distract him with treats, and that doesn't always work either. Once he's out, he's very jumpy and afraid of everything. How do we train him not to he afraid when he's out of the cage?

Any advice is much appreciated! My cocketeils were always very quick to warm up and very affectionate, so I'm not sure how to handle this situation. Sorry if I'm repeating anything that's already been said.

[tweetiepiesmom]

That sounds very typical. Does he eat millet? Try putting a piece of millet or his favorite treat at the perch by his door. Place it so that it is close to the door but he has to step out to enjoy it. Open his door and leave him to discover it on his own. Once he comes out to that perch on his own he should start exploring the outside of his cage and then will begin flying around. This mat take a few days - just be consistent in doing this. Good luck!

[Deleted]

My general rule is that if it doesn't hurt it's not a bite, though it also depends on body language. From your description it sounds to me like your budgie is play fighting your fingers the way our youngest does with ours. We let him because of having 4 and it being a way to interact, but he's also never bitten us. Whereas our eldest preens us extremely aggressively.

If you want him not to do it then the advice is probably the same as for biting, although other members may have other ideas for you. The general advice for biting is to say 'No' sternly or 'Ah-ah!' like a budgie telling off another budgie, and to immediately flip the budgie off of your hand. "Play time ends if you behave like that."

As for coming out of the cage, Tweetiepiesmom has given good advice. Placing a treat outside of the cage door to tempt them onto an outside perch. I had to put a perch and favoured toy outside the cage for my eldest when we moved house because he wasn't sure of the surroundings.

When I first got Indie and he was the only budgie in the house he was way too scared to come out of the cage. At first I could take him out on a stick or my hand because he was too nervous to jump off, but then he wised up and started jumping back into the cage. Indie was a year and half old when I got him, from an aviary, so he didn't play, and he also didn't know what millet was, so I couldn't tempt him. I got him a friend (not recommending that, by the way, I just gathered that it was what Indie needed) in the hope that a younger bird might encourage him, but all that happened was the young budgie who had been jumping out of his quarantine cage for a month just wanted to hang around with his friend, and thus they both stayed in the cage.
In the end I had to put perches at every door of their cage, open them, and use their nervousness of my hands to shepherd them out of the cage and then close the cage doors so that they couldn't just go hide inside the cage again.

All budgies tend to be nervous of their surroundings when they first come out of the cage.
The first few times he will likely bump into things and his main places to land will be anywhere high up. He might not be able to figure out how to get back to his cage either.
You can try taking the cage to a small room to start with so that retrieving him is a little easier.
Once he figures out the safe places to perch he will start enjoying being outside with you more, most likely.

[Hezz]

If you want to take him out, by all means do so. You don’t have to wait until he comes out on his own volition, although some people will tell you otherwise. My birds are taught not to come out until I bring them out, initially. For the rest of the day they can come and go as they please.If you do decide to bring him out, make sure there are obvious places around the room for him to perch, particularly up high. He will want a high perch rather than one down low, and placing a perching station above the rest of the furniture makes it much more obvious to a tentative, nervous first-timer.

Also, what is the cage like, and what size is the main door of the cage? Budgies do not like going through small doors as a rule, and the guillotine style doors aren’t helpful as they bang and drop without warning sometimes.