If animal advocates decided to pay attention to the gender rights of pets, they would discover a new, broadest and uncultivated field of activity. Full confusion and the dominance of stereotypes - this is what characterizes this side of the life of human companions, whom he indiscriminately calls his lesser brothers, often without bothering to figure out: who actually shares his home shelter - “brother” or “sister”. And it would be okay if the problem consisted only of absurdities and incidents accidentally discovered, but sometimes an incorrect determination of the sex of a pet is fraught with disappointment, or even rejection of the "unjustified confidence" pet, which turned out to be a darling, or vice versa.
Misunderstandings even happen with cats and dogs, taken into the house by small kittens and puppies with not yet so clearly expressed sexual characteristics. What can we say about hamsters, guinea pigs or, say, turtles. Judging by the nicknames, then we can seriously think that male turtles do not exist at all. And the birds! In many species of birds, it is very difficult to distinguish a female from a male, and here, perhaps, problems most often arise, because if turtles are usually bred not for breeding, then from a couple of budgies, the most common among exotic domestic birds, many want to wait for offspring . Therefore, the question - how to determine the sex of the budgerigar - is not at all idle!
Not just for the chicks
By the way, the ability to reproduce is not the only reason why determining the sex of the budgerigar is an important condition for choice. Being flocks of birds, parrots need company. Of course, the owner can make it, even better - a large family that pays enough attention to their pet, but the most comfortable budgerigar lives in pairs. And here, both physiological and psychological characteristics of these birds can fully manifest themselves negatively. Females involuntarily caught up in a pair will begin to pester each other with tenderness, and as a result they will fight, and males may experience a hormonal malfunction, as a result of which their behavior will change in an undesirable direction. In general, a same-sex couple will not be happy, so again the question comes to the fore: how to determine the sex of a budgerigar?
Girl or boy?
In appearance, all budgies - males and females - are the same. Neither by size, nor by plumage, nor by habits, they can be distinguished. So how to determine the sex of a budgerigar without resorting to DNA analysis? In the most literal sense, looking him "in the face"! There is one small area on the entire bird body that will “give out” this main parrot secret. This is a wax - a piece of skin that is located directly above the beak. Two such colored tubercles. It is their color that will help to find out who is in front of you - a girl or a boy. In the male, the wax is colored blue, in the female, it is white with blueness or grayish.
A few subtleties
So now you know how to determine the sex of a budgerigar. At least in a flock of birds you can accurately select a couple of individuals with a pronounced sign of sex. But here there are some small subtleties and tricks. The fact is that, so to speak, these are secondary sexual characteristics that appear in birds at the age of four months. But how do you know the sex of the budgerigar, which only recently hatched from an egg? For the same waxen! In young males it is pinkish-violet or lilac, in young females it is pale blue, with a white fringing of the nostrils. It is necessary to warn that these sex characteristics are far from being so pronounced for the chicks, so you need to be very careful when choosing, and it is better to buy a bred bird, because parrots live up to fifteen years, and a couple of months will not make “weather”. And one more thing: the wax is an indicator of the bird’s mood, it can lighten or darken depending on how the parrot feels. Thus, in an excited female, it becomes bright, and in a male who is not well, on the contrary, it can fade, which also makes identification difficult. So choose your pet when he is in a good mood.