It is essential for any animal to drink plenty of water, but you might have noticed that your budgie is drinking more water than usual. When your pet’s behavior is anything out of the ordinary, it is generally a cause for worry.
Why is my budgie drinking so much water? Drinking lots of water could simply be caused by changes in diet, stress, taking medication, or having babies. Also, drinking a lot more water than normal could be a sign of something more serious, including diabetes or infection.
There are several important things for you to know about a budgie’s water intake. Let’s get into how much water budgies should drink, to begin with, why your budgie might be drinking too much, and what you can do about it.
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Budgies’ Drinking Habits
One of the most important things you can do for any pet is to make sure that it gets clean and fresh water on a daily basis.
With budgies, you have multiple options in how you choose to provide it with water.
Most people who own budgies like to give their budgies a clean bowl of water on a daily basis. However, there are some people who have trained their budgies how to drink out of a water bottle.
Some budgies are unaware of the fact that what’s in their bowl is water, which is why they might not be approaching it. If this is the case with you, you may want to take the bowl and swish it around a little so that your budgie can see the water.
If you prefer to give your budgie bottled water, you may want to “spill” a tiny bit so that your budgie can once again see if there is water.
While in the process of teaching your budgie how to drink bottled water, you will want to monitor it closely, and you will want to have both the bowl and the bottle in its cage until you believe that your budgie has learned how to drink bottled water.
This is all up to personal preference and either way is perfectly safe.
The source of your water is also up to personal preference and there is no particular water that is better or worse. If it’s water that you would drink and that is clean, it’s safe for your budgie, too.
The next absolutely important thing for you to do is to make sure that you give your budgie fresh and clean water on a daily basis- sometimes even more than once per day. Plenty of people who own budgies say that they have to change the bowl three times per day.
This is because budgies will sometimes defecate or throw things into the water bowl, and just as it is unsanitary for humans to drink contaminated water, you wouldn’t want for your budgie to be drinking that either.
Plus, you may find your budgie avoiding water if its water bowl is dirty- which you don’t want, either.
Yes, budgies are pretty messy. However, there are ways how you can prevent them from making such a mess all the time. We show you how you can prevent your budgie from making such a mess in this article!
Budgies aren’t animals that drink a lot of water due to the fact that they don’t sweat and because they are also tiny creatures. The ways that a budgie loses water from its body is through defecation and breathing.
So, you will want to make sure that your budgie gets clean water daily. It is estimated that a budgie will drink approximately one teaspoon of water in a day, or about 5 percent of its body weight.
Also, they can not go for long without water. We explain in detail how long budgies can go without water in this article!
Now that you know about what’s normal for a budgie, let’s find out why your budgie might be drinking too much water.
Why Budgies Might Drink Too Much Water
As we mentioned before, sometimes budgies simply drink a lot of water for normal reasons, just as there might be some days where you feel particularly thirsty. Here are some of the normal reasons why a budgie might be drinking more water than usual:
1. Changes in diet
If you have introduced something new into your budgie’s diet recently, that could be the reason why it is drinking more water than usual. If this is the case, your budgie’s water intake should return to normal after they become adjusted to their new diet.
However, it could also be because you are feeding your budgie salty food. It is natural for an animal to drink more water when eating salty foods. It is recommended that you avoid giving budgies such food to eat.
2. Hot weather
It’s normal for anyone, including you, to increase their water intake during the hot months. If the weather got warm where you live or you keep your budgie’s cage in an area where there is particularly a lot of sun, you might see that your budgie is drinking a lot of water.
If the latter is the case, see if you can move the cage to somewhere that has less sun.
3. Feeding babies
If your budgie recently laid eggs that hatched, it is going to need to feed its young. This will also require your budgie to drink more water than necessary because it will be exerting a lot of energy.
4. Stress
There are several factors for stress, including the fact that you may have recently purchased your budgie and it is just getting used to its environment. Just as stress may be a cause for less water intake, it can also be a cause for more.
Allow your budgie to get used to its environment and, if possible, remove anything that might be causing your budgie stress.
In this regard we recommend reading our articles below – especially if you feel that your budgie is scared of YOU:
5. Exercise
Since it’s totally normal for you to get thirsty after some lengthy exercise, you should expect the same from your budgie, too.
If you’ve been letting your budgie fly out of its cage a lot or if you’ve been playing extensively with it, expect to see your budgie drinking more water than usual afterward.
Playing is the same as exercise. A lot of playing leads to drinking more water.
However, this isn’t bad at all as your budgie should always be able to play and engage in something. You should have a lot of toys for your budgie! We show you 15 toys budgies absolutely love in this article!
6. You should worry if…
If any of the above reasons are true, then you have nothing to worry about regarding your budgie’s health.
However, there are some cases where you will need to worry, and these become obvious when paired with other symptoms.
Birds try to avoid showing that they are in any sort of discomfort, however, so you will want to make sure that you are actively keeping an eye on your budgie in the event that you notice changes in its behavior.
The first thing that you might notice which will be a sign for you to take your budgie to the vet is diarrhea. If you see that, accompanied by drinking a lot more water, your budgie also has diarrhea, this could be a sign of sickness.
Just as with humans, budgies lose water content when they have diarrhea, so they are indeed becoming more and more dehydrated despite the fact that they are drinking more water.
Even worse, if your budgie has been urinating excessively, there is the possibility of it having diabetes. Once you take your budgie to the vet, tests done by the avian vet will determine if there is glucose content in the urine, which will indicate diabetes.
You will also want to look for other signs that are associated with illness in budgies, such as wheezing, difficulty breathing, droopy feathers, swelling, silence, and more.
We have created an article on signs that show that your budgie might be dying. This article will help you with identifying sickness in your budgie. You should read it here!
Especially quiet budgies are often sick as budgies usually are pretty loud. You can read in our article here more about why your budgie might be quiet!
If any of the signs we listed is present, or if things just simply don’t seem right, you should take your budgie to the vet straight away. Your vet will determine what the problem is and prescribe the right treatment.
However, if you notice that your budgie looks exactly the same as normal and it is behaving as its usual self, you will want to check for any of the reasons that we have listed above.
If you find that stress, exercise, heat, or feeding, or dietary changes are the cause of your budgie’s overdrinking, you have no reason to be worried.
Related Questions
Why isn’t my budgie drinking water? On the flip side, you may have noticed that your budgie isn’t drinking the water you have provided at all. Check to see if the water is dirty. Perhaps your budgie doesn’t know where the water is. If you checked both of these and nothing has changed, contact the avian vet.
Do budgies drink tap water or bottled water? Many people wonder if a budgie can indeed drink tap water. It is typically said that, if you yourself wouldn’t mind drinking the water, you can give it to your budgie. Some people prefer giving their budgies bottled water, and others prefer tap water. It depends on personal preference, but either is fine.
Can budgies get water from food? Yes. In fact, it is recommended that you provide your budgie with fresh fruit and vegetables. Make sure that they are fresh and that you remove them from the cage after an hour or so. Fruits and vegetables are high in water content, which will aid in hydrating your budgie.