How to identify whether your Budgie is Male or Female ?

New Budgie breeders often have this question in their mind when buying new budgies and when having new babies.

Here's the steps fellas:-

To enable you to determine a female budgie from a male budgie you need to look at the color
of the budgie’s "cere". The cere is the area directly above the beak housing the nostrils.

Male budgies (cock) under the age of 4 months have pink ceres (nose). The pink cere turns purple to blue by the time the cock reaches sexual maturity. When the cocks are fertile and ready to breed (This is called being in Breeding Condition), their cere changes into shiny/deep blue colour. When the cock gets out of breeding condition, the cere changes back to its normal blue colour.

However, there are certain mutations of budgies that keep their pink cere throughout their lifetime. Some of those mutations include Recessive Pied, Albino, Lutino.(I will talk about them later).

                                                           Young male budgie

                                                       Adult male budgie

A female budgie (hen) has a blue or white cere with white rings around the nostrils (nose holes) when they are young. As they reach maturity, the cere colour changes to brown or white, or stays a colour of bright blue with white rings around the nostrils. When the hen is fertile and ready to breed, her cere will turn even a darker brown colour and will form flakes/crusts on the cere. When the hen is out of Breeding condition, the colour changes back to its normal white/blue/lighter brown colour.

                                                             Young Female budgie

                                                              Adult Female budgie

Other ways to know and make sure of your budgie's sex is to notice its behavior.

Male budgies are usually much more playful and get on easily with other budgies.

Female budgies are usually more aggressive and munch away at bits and pieces of nesting material like paper.

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