by Pajarita » Sat Nov 14, 2020 11:31 am
Yes, the stress of your hand in their cage was, most definitely, one of the causes for her aggression. Another one could have been that she was overly hormonal due to diet and possibly also a human light schedule because budgies absolutely LOVE other budgies and the only time they fight is when two young males choose the same female. But, once the female chooses one of the two males, fights are over forever.
One needs to be VERY careful with budgies because they are super opportunistic breeders - so much so that people used to believe (and you still find references to this online to this day) that they can breed all year round when, in nature, no bird does that. EVER. Give them a human schedule and/or free-feed them protein food (pellets, seeds, nuts, avicakes, nutriberries, etc) and they will start producing sexual hormones and never stop (birds in the wild don't produce sexual hormones all year round, they start, they breed and then they stop until the next year) which makes them overly hormonal and that always means aggression. So the right diet and the right light schedule are both essential to their wellbeing. I had a large budgie flock (over 30) when I had the rescue in Pa and had 7 or 8 of them in this house and they did great together - never a problem, good eaters, good bathers... pretty, healthy and happy little birds that require almost no effort to care for properly. I LOVE budgies and can't wait until I am able to get another little flock of them (my husband misses them - he used to stop everyday by their cage and comment on how beautiful they were and he is not a bird person!).
There are three tricks to keep budgies well: 1) good husbandry (diet, light schedule, housing) - 2) only put together birds that belong to the same age group (meaning not mixing babies with juveniles with adults) and 3) keep an even number of males and females until you have more than three pairs (it's either one male/female pair, two pairs or three pairs but, after that, you can have uneven numbers although I always think it's kind of cruel to leave one without a mate of its own). If you do this and give them a large cage, roomy enough for them to fly a bit in it (with natural tree branches, little swings, etc) and enough feeders and water bowls for all of them (you can put their grain/veggie food on a paper plate at the bottom of the cage -which works better for them because they are partial ground foragers so going to ground to feed is a natural behavior for them) but, if you use bowls, you need to put enough of them so they don't fight for them).
Now, the best way to get them used to going back into their cage on their own is to get them used to a strict meal routine - breakfast of grain/veggie with leafy greens (always put the leafy greens dripping water both hanging from the top of the cage and stuck between the bars -they like to 'bathe' in them, another natural behavior for them because they come from a semi-arid climate and it's dangerous for them to spend too much time on the ground even if there is a source of water nearby so they use the wet tree leaves to 'bathe) at dawn and seeds for dinner at dusk. After you have been doing this for a couple of weeks (a delay that will also help with her fear of you because you are going to leave her be during this time), you start by letting her out one hour before dinner time (take the food out of her cage when you let her out). When it's dinner time (the room will have darkened a bit by then because the sun is setting but she will still be able to see very clearly), you put seeds on the bottom of the cage and give her the command to go inside (I use 'Go Home!" but you can use whatever word or phrase you want as long as you always use the same). I also use a long stick (a dowel from a flight cage) to 'herd' them in (I never touch them with the stick, I simply hold it aloft and behind them kind of 'herding' them in the right direction. Now, I am not going to lie to you, it takes a few weeks and A LOT of patience to teach them to do this because, at the beginning, they do not understand what you want and because they have been kept in a cage for so long, they do NOT want to go back into it so, sometimes, you will have to spend an hour or so waiting them out until hunger and their desire for the seeds (and this is why it's so important that they don't get seeds all day long - aside from their health, of course!) win and they go in. And, sometimes, night will fall and they are still out - in which case what you need to do is make the room completely dark and put a light above the cage shining into it so the only lit place is their cage because birds always fly toward the light when in darkness. And, if this fails (but you do need to wait at least half an hour), then you will have to turn off the light on the cage and throwing something like, say, a kitchen towel on her, gently grab her and put her back in her cage.
As time goes by and the birds get used to going back to their cage for their dinner, you can start allowing them a couple of hours of flight instead of only one and you will even be able to let them out in the morning - which is what I do. I open their cages as soon as there is a little bit of light (this time of the year, 6:15 to 6:30 am) and clean their cages, prepare their food for the day, etc and when their cages are ready, I tell them to go home - and they all go because they are really hungry for their breakfast. I leave them in their cages for about 20 minutes or so and then let them out again until the early pm (this time of the year, I put them back in their cages at 2 pm) when I turn off the overhead lights. And, although there is no seed dinner in their cages, they go back willingly because they are now again quite hungry as I close the doors to their cage so they cannot go in and munch whenever they feel like it. Then, at 3:30 pm, they get their seed dinner and get ready to go to sleep (the days are very short this time of the year).
I have one bird (a female GCC) that I know for a fact is parent-raised and two more (male and female Quaker pair) that I highly suspect they were not handfed either and that means I cannot handle them at all because they will not allow me to even touch them (same as budgies would) but they all go in when I tell them to and use my 'baton' (I need to make a video so people can see how easy it is to do this but neither my husband nor I are very good at technology). Parrots are incredibly smart birds and learn very easily to follow commands as long as the caregiver is patient, consistent and persistent and as long as what we ask them to do is not against their nature - and there is nothing more natural to them than eating at dawn and dusk so by using their natural habits as tools, it's not a hard thing to teach them to go back into their cages when we need them to. BUT, this also means that we do the same thing every day and that we do not try to 'trick' them by making them believe they will get a treat when they are not going to. Parrots think like people do (it's called general intelligence and it means that they use different sources to reach a single conclusion) so they remember what we do and expect us to do 'the right thing' so, if you ever need to get them to go back into their cages early, you need to give them something to make it worth it (just a little bit of seed would do).
Let me know if there is anything else we can help you with and thank you so much for considering getting her a mate!