Birds who know how to fly experience a freedom that birds who don’t know how to fly don’t experience.
Without flight, birds miss out on a major part of being a bird.
If your baby budgie can’t fly you’d understandably be worried. This article looks into why your baby budgie can’t fly
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Why can’t my baby budgie fly?
Birds learn how to fly quite early on and the more they do it, the more confident they are about it.
If your baby budgie can’t fly at all then you’d understandably be worried.
Here is why your baby budgie can’t fly:
Wing clipping:
One of the reasons why your baby bird may not be able to fly may be that its wings were clipped too early or they were clipped too much.
Your young budgie will learn to fly in the early days of their life.
The process of learning how to fly helps the bird gain confidence, independence, and depth of perception.
Clipping the bird’s wings will keep the bird from learning how to fly. It can take between 6 to 18 weeks for the feathers to grow back properly.
What to do:
If early wing clipping is what has happened with your bird don’t worry, the bird will be fine once its feathers grow back.
Your baby budgie can be taught to fly as soon as its feathers grow back
While it’s ideal that your baby bird learn how to fly when it is as young as possible, the bird will still be able to learn how to fly when it is older.
Remember to have patience when teaching an older bird how to fly.
This process may take a couple of months, but the bird will fly with no issues as soon as it learns how to fly.
French molt:
If your bird’s feathers don’t look exactly right then the bird may have a condition called French molt.
This is a viral disease of young budgies that isn’t usually fatal to the birds unless they are very young.
What you’ll see in a budgie who has French molt is an abnormality of the feathers like short and/or stunted feathers.
When the wings of a bird with French molt are extended, you’ll notice some feathers missing.
Another sign of this condition in your bird is a bird walking on the ground because it can’t fly.
French molt budgies will also be very tame because they can’t fly. This inability to fly will make them more dependent on humans.
Birds who have this condition are often called runners because they will scurry around the cage floor and won’t fly around the cage.
What to do:
If you suspect that one of your birds has this condition it’s recommended that you isolate it away from the other birds.
If you don’t isolate the affected bird then it can infect the other birds in the cage.
Budgies don’t like to be isolated and have no company, so, you’d need to hang around the bird a lot to keep it from becoming lonely
You can test the bird for this condition at a vet.
The vet will give you a definite answer on whether your bird has this condition or not.
Thankfully, French molt budgies will usually grow a normal set of feathers in about a year and the birds will grow up to be perfectly normal budgies.
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