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Anyone else's budgies get antisocial during molt or food changes?

LiefDuivel

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Callum Rivoire
Anyone else's budgie's get more anti-social when they molt? My boy is usually a bit more prickly, but never anti-social during molts, but the past 3 days he's been less social than normal.

From wake up to about 3pm, he's his normal self, does all his routines, and is very social. but from about mid afternoon til bedtime, he suddenly wants to stay in his cage, demanding I partially cover him and nipping at me if I offer my finger or go to change his food. he's also staying awake later than normal, singing after bedtime. I thought maybe it's his molt, since there's more feathers at the bottom of his cage, but it's rare for him to be so cage bound, especially in a routine manner like this?

He's still active in the cage, so not really lethargic, he just plays with his toys or talks to his "friends" (a livestream of other birds in his cage i play for a few hours a day). He's eating and drinking normally too, though he has been less excited for treats than normal. He still eats them, just a little bit at a time and generally ignores them.

Then i wondered if it's because we changed his food? He eats one brand consistently, but they were out the day we bought food recently and got an alternative. There's darker millet in the mix that's made his poop a very dark green, but otherwise he seems to eat it just fine so i'm not sure if it's upsetting him?

but yeah, do your birds ever get antisocial in this way around molt or food changes? i'm like 90% sure its not a health issue since he literally had a check up 3 weeks ago and everything was normal.
 

Shezbug

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Budgie shows no changes, Birdie shows no changes, Burt turns into the devil himself if you so much as look at where a new feather is growing- he gets a bit short tempered especially if a pin is bumped. I guess Burt is much more sensitive to feather growth than the other two here, he also tends to be more excited and desperate for any high energy foods when molting so his chick pea offerings are daily when new feathers are about. Takes quite a bit of energy stores to grow new feathers.
 

LiefDuivel

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Callum Rivoire
Budgie shows no changes, Birdie shows no changes, Burt turns into the devil himself if you so much as look at where a new feather is growing- he gets a bit short tempered especially if a pin is bumped. I guess Burt is much more sensitive to feather growth than the other two here, he also tends to be more excited and desperate for any high energy foods when molting so his chick pea offerings are daily when new feathers are about. Takes quite a bit of energy stores to grow new feathers.
Awe, that makes sense! Poor Burt haha my little Teeka used to be the same way, demanded extra chop whenever she was molting and was out for blood
 

Sparkles99

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My budgies don’t tend to change like that. BTW, I love your avatar!
 

LiefDuivel

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My budgies don’t tend to change like that. BTW, I love your avatar!
he's perked up again just a day after and i've since discovered he was grumpy his food got changed and didn't include his favorite oats and thus I apparently stole the joy of chewing on oat husks in my hair... a primadona for sure

but thank you haha this is my favourite picture of him
 
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