sleasia new budgie mom

[sleasia]

Well, I hope you guys can help me out. I know nothing about budgies. I went into the pet store to buy a jar of fish food and found 9 budgies up for adoption in a tiny 24x18x30 cage. the sign said.."you can have all the birds and the cage for $25. We don't want to separate them because they are all one family" . so of course, I took the birds and the cage, went home got on ebay and bought them a mighty fine huge cage and toys, and started like that. They seemed happy, eat out of my hand etc. and 2 months later now we have 4 eggs, two of which have just hatched...What should I do? This is kind of how I started with fish, and now I have a 200 gallon saltwater tank full of amazing fish and with filters and stuff I have built all myself. I learned alot from saltwaterfish.com message boards over the last two years, and I assume I can do the same for the budgies, by getting advice from you guys....My kids got a plain wooden birdhouse to paint for their birthday and we hung that in the huge cage for the birds to play in...Not being too bright, I didn't realize this was going to trigger them to nest and lay eggs!!! But I am delighted. I just don't know what I have to do? do I have to separate the mom and babies from the other birds. So far I have done nothing and they all seem fine. The mom sits on them daily and the other birds don't seem to be bothering her or the babies...Help!!

[Monica]

Welcome to BB!

If there seems to be no problems with the other birds, you can leave all the birds in one cage. If you are lucky, the others may even help raise the chicks! If you see any problems though, it may be best to remove the 'extra' birds.

However, saying that this is a family of budgies, you should prevent any of them from breeding again in the future since you probably don't know who the original pair (mother and father) is, and you don't want the siblings breeding with eachother, let alone with their parents. If you allow this, then you could end up with chicks that are born with defects or in bad health.