Hello all!

I wanted to say thank you to everyone here for always having some great answers to questions I never even had to ask. I've loved using this site for all its wealth of knowledge and I'm so proud to be a part of this loving budgie community.

I've had budgies for many, many years now. Those in my profile pic were my first two and have since sadly passed away. However, I could not see my life without budgies and have been rescuing/adopting budgies from unfortunate situations ever since. I've had a lot of luck in that they all tend to get along great. Long story short, I wound up getting three babies (still unnamed) that were born in the end of January (about 10 weeks ago). I'll add some picks so you can see how precious they are!



This little one I believe is a young female, she does have a bit of an apparent iris. She's the most mellow of the bunch and gets along well with the other two.


The white bird, I assume, is a young female recessive pied, and her buddy in yellow is a young male recessive pied (neither have apparent irises).


My main concern is that these three were getting along just fine before this whole quarantine deal (we do reside in NYS), whereas now it seems they're getting a little sick of each other. There are some times when they're very good at getting along. They preen each other, feed each other, play with the same toys together, etc. We've created multiple jungle gyms and bird trees from natural wood and rope. They have toys littered throughout their cage as well as throughout our living space. They spend all day out of the cage, unless looking for food (for which there are three dishes of). These are two pictures of them on a good day on two of their outside play areas.

This is one of two rope swinging toys we have hanging from the ceiling. They love to chew everything on it and nap up their frequently.


This tree stand sits on top of their cage. It's completely strapped together with rope and they absolutely love crinkle paper.


Now, on a not so good day, our little white birds becomes the biggest instigator. She loves to fly around the house the most, seemingly with the greatest amount of energy of them all. At this point though, she gets on the nerves of her siblings. She'll chase and yell at them if they're in her way and she gets rather bossy about, well, everything. Of course, no one has been hurt and when the bickering arises, I am usually quick to come over and give them a stern "Hey, that's enough." This usually separates them and they go about their separate ways. While I am getting tired of this, today threw me a bit over the edge. Both yellow budgie and white budgie were atop their cage screaming and kicking each other when I turned around to see what the ruckus was about. I immediately separated the two and moved the white budgie into the cage, and the room was peaceful once again.

While I can tell that the white budgie is not happy being away from her siblings who are hanging out without her, I know this is the safest place for all of them immediately. I also know this is only a temporary fix. I would really love some input from those who maybe have raised siblings before, since I didn't know they could be this upset with each other at such a young age. Additionally, I've been reading up on aggression and trying make sure there is an equal amount of everything for everyone, but I'm not sure this is working. I'm open to all suggestions, since we may be stuck in this situation for a little while.

They are so cute! I'm sue Star can tell you the sex of each of your babies and then you can get to naming them.
Do they all live in the same cage? How big is their cage?

Up until last night, they did all live in the same cage. The dimensions are 30 in. x 18 in. x 19 in. (76.2 cm x 47.72 cm x 48.26 cm) by my measurements. Their larger flight cage would not have fit in my car in our "evacuation" from Long Island.

(https://prevuepet.com/product/165/la...bird-cage-f050 - their cage at home)

I agree with your gender assessment of the budgies.
Generally, having two of one gender and one of another can end up being a problem over time.
It sounds as if your little white female may becoming a bit hormonal and she is getting somewhat aggressive and territorial.
Other than keeping her separated from the other two, I don't believe there is much you can do to modify her behavior toward them.

They are beautiful and you are obviously providing them with a great and stimulating environment during these trying times.

Are you careful to limit their daylight hours to no more than 8 per day to help discourage any mating activities?

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Thank you for your input. Because they're so young, I didn't think as much about discouraging mating behavior, but now I see what you mean. I will be keeping the male separate from the females from this point on, as well as limiting their daylight hours.

Does anyone have suggestions about how to keep budgies separate but give them a fair amount of free flying time around the house? They seem much better through a cage with each other than when they're out and about. I've never had to keep budgies separate before so any suggestions would be wonderful.

Thanks!

I would suggest you bird-proof two separate rooms in your home and allow the females out of cage time in one and the male(s) out of cage time in the other.

You can block the entrances of the rooms with a tension rod on which you hang a curtain to block them from exiting that space.

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