When do buds stop growing/ what is an ideal budgie weight?

[Marianne Marlow]

Snowy is a show bird but Basil and Hector are not, they are just large birds.

[BudgiesBuddy]

Basil and Hector must be the ones who don't take show feathers characteristics from parents, but have the same size as show budgies.

[Hezz]

Smudge weighs 56gms. She's just fat! She is quite a small bird.

[BudgiesBuddy]

This is Breeze. By looking at this picture, most would say that he is a pet type. But in person, he is as big as my show budgies, with feathers like pet type.

[BudgiesBuddy]

Jan 18, 2014 9:42:10 GMT Hezz said:

Smudge weighs 56gms. She's just fat! She is quite a small bird.

Unfortunately, that is what we know. I mean that the weight is not about size here.

[Marianne Marlow]

Aw poor smudgey

She is as heavy as Hector!

BudgiesBuddy Breeze looks just like Hector!! what does he weigh?

[BudgiesBuddy]

Jan 18, 2014 9:51:09 GMT Marianne Marlow said:

Aw poor smudgey

She is as heavy as Hector!

BudgiesBuddy Breeze looks just like Hector!! what does he weigh?

He is perfectly well, but weighs as much as my show birds

[Hezz]

He is a lovely fellow. But that's no surprise as Hector is one of my all time favorites.

[tinker]

Lol Smokey was massive at his largest at over 100gms. He was an entire head and shoulders above his budgie friend Lucki. Smokey had clearly been from some sort of extreme show budgie stock and he had been the youngest among his siblings! Great personality though and he was easy to tame and not too keen to fly - was probably exhausting for him to fly with such a big body.  Of course he also got kind of fat even though I tried hard to encourage him to fly for exercise. He ended up with diabetes.

[Marianne Marlow]

tinker Do you have any photos of Smokey?
I am finding it hard to imagine a budgie at over 100 grams!

[tinker]

He looked pretty normal really!!! The one in my profile picture is Smokey although he was already sick by the time I took that. He's not in a budgie hut. I had to buy their large hut because the budgie hut was too small for him. Just when you compared him to the size of another budgie the difference was noticeable. Like when Lucki was alive Smokey was clearly much bigger. Whenever I go to a pet shop I feel shocked at how small the budgies look. Smokey had been in good health and able to fly for three and a bit years of his four years. Then he quickly lost weight and was underweight before he got down to nearly about the size of an average budgie of about 50gms (I will have to check what he weighed at that last checkup). I remember the vet said he still had a couple of pockets of fat left even then but was underweight for his build. He loved his food more than anything so I guess that contributed to his size - but I think it was mainly genetics. This Christmas I went back to Invercargill and visited the pet shop I purchased him at. They had lots of cages of budgies and one of the cages had two budgies in that were the exact same feather pattern mutation as Smokey was - which isn't that usual I guess (I haven't seen it locally before) - Grey blue budgies with black spots all over a white head - it was pretty distinctive if you saw it up close. So I can only assume they are budgies that had the same parents but hatched more recently. Those siblings did not seem as large as Smokey though - but still on the large side (they still had their spots down to their ceres). I can only assume I maybe just got a big one and then fed him a bit too well - he did love his food!! He would eat absolutely anything he could find. He also tried to eat his perches. I'll post some pictures when I have time. I'm sure I've got an old one somewhere of him sitting below Lucki on a perch. I remember I was trying to make them face each other for a picture because I wanted them to make a heart shape for the camera but Smokey was too tall so I put the perch beside Lucki down lower!! I also have photos somewhere of closeups of the lovely spots on his head instead of stripes.