On Saturday, June 26, 1999 at 1:00:00 AM UTC-6, Norman Ratcliffe wrote:

I have had a single female budgie for just over two years. During this
time she has only been out of her cage 5 or 6 times. She can fly but seems reluctant to leave her cage. Am I doing wrong by not trying to make her fly? I open the cage door every evening but she will not come out. Can anyone advise me?

I've had several baby budgies come out of the nest and never fly. I call them 'crawlers' as I have heard before of budgies that don't fly. If they live, they eventually seem to learn to navigate the flight by climbing, but flight is always downward. I'
m not sure what causes this, but I don't suspect diet, because I give all of my birds, breeding or not, fortified parakeet mix plus all the kale, spinach, and grated carrots they can eat. I have had no luck at forcing them to fly, and it even seems
contagious, in that if there are one or two crawlers on the floor of the flight when other babies leave the nest, often they won't try to fly either. I have had occasion to have as many as a dozen young birds languishing on the floor of my flight. :(
Of course they are not fit to sell in that condition, so …. I generally resort to the extreme means of moving them out of the indoor comfort of the breeding flight to the outdoor flight, where they are subjected to the elements. That at least tasks
them to climb high enough to fly back inside, as they don't last long if they can't get up to the feeders - and of course, winter here in Colorado is not comfortable. And yes, sometimes they don't survive. That's nature taking her toll.

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