Is my budgie a boy or a girl?

[alestori]

Hello folks,
I've been with Zico and Maradona for 29 days today, we'll soon complete a month together. However I've been starting to doubt Maradona's gender for a few reasons. I'd like to check with more experienced budgie-owners if I'm correct or just tripping. I'd like to note that the pet shop owner told me they were about 1 to 1,5 month old when I got them and that they were surely both males. So here goes.
1- When I got them, they both had very light bluish-lilac cere. However as time passed, Zico's cere got way more blue, while Maradona's remained a light blue, almost white cere.
2- Zico vocalizes a lot, every morning when I put their cage on the window he immediately starts chirping and singing and squawking. Maradona does it too, but only a few minutes later and way less. Also his (her?) chirps have a very different tone from Zico's.
3- Zico seems to be clearly bigger than Maradona.
4- Maradona recently decided to take possession of the nesting box, and doesn't even let Zico peek inside when he (she?) is in there. Could this be some female nesting instinct or something?

Here's a photo of them two that I took yesterday night when I began wondering.
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1Sa...wiBrFwvebNDdbc

Hope anyone can help me figure out this mystery. My sister even suggested renaming Maradona as Madonna, if he is really a she lmao.
Thanks everyone.

[maxollie]

Hi, and welcome to the community. Your budgies are so beautiful. Budgies have to be at least a year old before their bodies are mature and ready for breeding. To me, both look very young, but older than 1.5 months old, now 2.5 months old. Is there a chance you meant they were 1.5 years old? That, of course does make them old enough to breed. Looking at the green one, I do think that one is definitely a boy. He still has some black bars on the top of his head, and those bars will all disappear at about a year old. The blue budgie has no bars, which makes me think it could be older, and with that light color mutation, sometimes it is hard to tell the eex, because the ceres never turn dark blue in a male, and your budgie does have a lighter color cere. A hen budgie has a light ivory or tan colored cere. When a hen is in breeding condition, the cere turns brown or crusty brown color. I have bred budgies before, and if the hen does begin laying eggs in the box, she will not let the male into the box until the eggs hatch. Further, do not use any nesting material in the box at all. The hen with her beak shaves off tiny pieces of the bottom of the box, and uses them for nesting material. The male will imediately go into the box when first egg hatches. He will then regurgitate seed from his mouth into the hens mouth, and she will feed the babies. He will perch out of the box at night as well.

If you have avian vets in your area, they could do a DNA test for you, but often times the cost is quite high.

If it were me, I would remove the nest box for now, and give them a few more months to mature. If, you do see them mating, and the hen, if you have one, lays an egg, then put the nest box back in the cage.

Also, do a Google search for...breeding budgies and budgie hens laying eggs. There is great into on the web.

Your budgies need to have access to cuttlebone at all times, and also, fresh leaf lettuce and other fresh fruits and veggies except for any cabbage family veggies like kale, parsley, cabbage, bok choy, and broccoli. They have a phyto chemical in them that can cause esophageal tumors in budgies. If you feed seed, and no pellets, ( which, in my view, is the better choice anyway), then get a bottle of bird vitamins at the pet shop, and put a few drops in the seed cup, mixed with the seed, about once every ten days. They need to be in great health and also mature, to breed, and the hen, needs the cuttlebone, so she will lay eggs with a hard shell. Otherwise, if she cannot push out the egg, she could get egg bound, and that could result in her dying.

Breeding is no easy feat. You have a better chance for success if you read all about breeding, and are prepared for the experience. Good luck! We welcome your updates and questions anytime.

[alestori]

Hey! Thanks a lot for the tips!
Though I really meant 1,5 month, at least according to the pet shop owner. He might've lied, of course, to persuade me to get the budgies on his store. However, here in my country they seldom sell budgies older than 6 months old, and they were both quite small when I got them (they are quite small, still, compared to my first budgie that I got with 4 months old). I never even intended to get a female, precisely because I have no experience whatsoever in breeding, so I specifically asked if they were both males, to which the man replied "yes".
In any case, I'd be happy to breed if that would be the case.

[maxollie]

Please feel welcome to come back often and share your updates and questions with us! I will watch for your posts. I have homed budgies for many years. Like you, I always preferred males. The one time I bred a pair, was only because I ended up with a female one time, which I did not know. I had four males, put her in the cage with them, and a few months later, I saw two mating, and Buttercup laid an egg, off the perch!!!! To my complete surprise! Lololol. So I did breed them, and they had four beautiful babies. I sure did a lot of research on line at the time, because I did not have a clue how to proceed. So, you can do some research now, so you will be prepared, just in case. Looking at the blue one, I do think that one could be a female.

[gimaal]

Zico is certainly a boy. Maradona appears to be a hen if the area around her nostrils is as white as it appears to be in the photo. The behavior you describe also supports these gender assignments.