Anyone with parakeet experience?

[chick2good4u]

Can anyone tell me what sex the yellow parakeet in the picture is? It is young but I don't know the exact age. We got it as a companion for the blue parakeet - Rain

 

[arlee453]

My guess is female, but it can be hard to tell with the lighter colors of parakeets. If the blue one is more than a year old, it's probably a male. If it's still young, it might be female also.

GENERALLY speaking you can go by the color of the cere - the fleshy part above the beak where the nostrils are. If the cere is blue it's usually male, pink, white or light brown is female - but that's not 100% depending on the color of the birds.

In really young birds the cere color is even less reliable. Look at the nostrils. In a very young female, the area of the cere above the nostrils will be almost transparent or more whitish around them where in a males they will be more opaque.

It looks like there is a whitish sheen to the nostrils - that along with the pink color makes me guess female.

As females become sexually mature their cere will usually darken significantly. Once my ladies start laying eggs and raising babies their ceres will become either very washed out pinkish in the lighter birds or completely brown and crusty looking in the darker birds.

Also temperment can tell you a lot. Male baby budgies (not hand raised, but parent raised like most petshop birds) tend to be much gentler when handled. Females will almost always screetch and bite even from a very young age. A sweet laid back baby is almost always male.

Hope this helps!

Enjoy your birds. I have an aviary outdoors with a flock of parakeets. It's really amazing how their behavior changes when they have a flock and the room of a true flight cage.

Check out my webcam to see my budgies... link in my signature below.

 

[chick2good4u]

arlee453 thanks for the info. The blue one was sold as a male he is over a year old. We just got the yellow one and the place we got it was iffy on the sex, but guessed female. We've had the blue one about 6 months and he seemed really lonely. We just got the yellow one a week ago. They both seem really happy. The blue one feeds the yellow one and they groom each other. It's so neat to watch them!

 

[wanda047]

Ditto what chick2good4u said. Blue one definitely looks like a male. I would guess the yellow is a female. It's been years since I raised parakeets. I had no one to ask advice from, so it was all hands-on learning and reading everything I could. Had a really sweet parakeet named Harvey that liked to join us at the supper table. You should've seen him eating spaghetti!

 

[KattyKillFish]

yeah, the yellow one looks like a female. but i've never worried too much about gender, because parakeets seem like they will cuddle any other parakeet indiscriminately. they sire are pretty though! the yellow one looks happy to see you

blue one is definitely a male. how cute!!


~Edited for spelling

 

[rodriguezpoultry]

I'm going to hope the yellow is a female, but I see a tinge of blue starting on her nares.

 

[KattyKillFish]

Quote:
yeah i saw that. i might wait a bit and see, females can have some blue on their beaks but not a whole lot..