Travel Carrier

Traveling to and from shows is very hard on budgies.  However, there are steps you can take to minimize the stress your birds experience.  You can help prepare your birds by increasing their feed with an abundance of millet spray a couple of weeks before the show to give them some stamina for the trip.  

Consider using a travel container (see pictures) for transporting your birds by car to shows.  This is especially important when traveling long distances.  Budgies traveling in a regular bird cage get a very strenuous leg and foot workout.  The bird must maintain a tight grip on the perch to balance due to the constant vibration and bumps caused by the car as it travels.  This is hardest on young budgies and large birds.  

I learned this the hard way.  We have a very large, heavy budgie we named “Lucky”.  He is a very special bird to us, as he earned my daughter, Caroline, a Best in Show. We took him to a show in a regular bird cage and he sat on the wooden perches.  The trip was an 8 hour car ride to and from the show, which is not unusual for exhibitors in the U.S.  When we returned home from the show, I returned Lucky to the flight.  He looked a little droopy.  A few days later, we found him face down in the sawdust in our flight.  He was having difficulty raising his head off the floor.

We rushed Lucky to our avian vet. Fortunately, we have a wonderful vet, Dr. Valerie Campbell, who practices in Berryville Virginia.  Dr. Campbell is amazing with budgies. Many vets I have tried in the past really don’t seem to understand the budgie.  They usually just prescribe Baytrill for everything.   In fact, I usually don’t recommend that budgie owners take their budgies to the vets.  The visit to the vet is often more stressful to the bird and causes more damage than the any possible cure that a vet could offer. Then you have to consider your bank account anytime you take a bird to the vets.  

Dr. Campbell is different from other avian vets. She understands breeders and gives us a generous discount, which we appreciate. It didn’t take long for her to diagnose Lucky’s condition.  His legs had completely given out due to the stress of traveling to and from the show.  She prescribed an anti-inflammatory and an antibiotic—since he was stressed and therefore vulnerable to disease.  She also told us to take him home and place him under a low heat lamp in an aquarium with no perches.  We filled the bottom of a ten gallon aquarium with an inch or so of seed so he could rest in it.  It took Lucky nearly a month to recover from his travels in a cage. We put a small dish of water in a corner so he could easily reach it.  I really didn’t expect him to pull through, but he did. 

Ever since Lucky’s ordeal, whenever I travel to a show, I use a special cage designed for travel.  These cages are ideal as they have no perches, are relatively dark and enclosed on three sides.  I can fit between 6 to 8 budgies in the travel cage.  I put about an inch of seed on the bottom for the birds to rest on.  The birds usually huddle in a corner together, as if they were in a nest box.  It’s pretty doubtful that the budgies are going to drink water during the trip, so we put corn on the cob in the travel cages for the birds to get some hydration. WARNING:  Make sure you wipe off any corn from your birds’ beak before putting them in a show cage. Once, we were at a show where the Judge said a bird he was judging looked like it had scaly face.  On further inspection, we realized that it just had a piece of dried corn stuck over its beak. Avoid the embarrassment! 

Like show cages, these travel cages are hard to come by.  If you are a craftsman, you could build one, I am sure.  If not, you will probably have to look to buy them from other breeders. The other option, also pictured, is to use the inexpensive airline travel carriers sold in many pet shops.  This container is designed to be placed under the seat on the airplane.  These work fine, but seed sifts out of it easily and can make a mess in your car.

Happy travels.