What Are the Stones for Budgies?

Budgies swallow tiny stones, pebbles and grit to aid digestion. Hobbyists typically feed fine oyster shells to their budgies, particularly during breeding season. Oyster shell grit has a high calcium content, which assists the female budgies or hens to produce eggs with strong shells. Grit is required as a nutritional supplement and as an aid to grind up seeds and other particulate items in the budgie's muscular stomach. Grit is an integral part of a wild parakeet's diet and should be fed to captive budgies.

  1. Ingredients in Grit

    • Mineral grit is packaged by various bird food manufacturers and contains tiny pieces of limestone, quartz, charcoal and the sterilized shells of mollusks. These commercial grit products also contain a variety if additional ingredients, including sterilized egg shells, refined bone meal, fine sea sand, calcium carbonate, salt and copper sulphate. Soluble grit provides a source of trace minerals, including calcium carbonate, for budgies. Calcium carbonate is digested in the first part of the budgie's stomach and provides a valuable source of calcium.

    Grit Considerations

    • Some aviculturists believe that grit causes the budgie's crop to become compacted and refrain from feeding it. According to Rosemary Low, a parrot specialist and Dr Stacey Gelis, a bird veterinarian, budgies benefit from eating soluble grits. They believe that a budgie's crop becomes compacted when it has been denied correct mineral supplements for extended periods and subsequently gorges itself on grit, once it is eventually offered the product. Rosemary Low says that budgies that died from compacted crops were also likely suffering from a digestive or other type of illness.

    Role of Grit

    • Budgies have a high metabolism and store food in their crop while their gizzard and stomach are digesting the previous meal. Food then passes from the crop to the gizzard, where pieces of grit and tiny stones assist the keratin plates to grind it into smaller pieces in preparation for digestion. Grit, therefore, plays a part in mechanically breaking down food and is not totally responsible for the process. Grit is eventually worn down in the gizzard and finally passes into the digestive tract. Minerals that make up the grit are then absorbed by the lower digestive tract.

    Feeding Grit

    • Budgies have individual temperaments and behaviors. You can leave a bowl of grit with many budgies that will eat in healthy and safe ways. However, you should not allow fledgling and ill budgies to help themselves to grit. In these cases, you should sprinkle a pinch of grit over their food. Mineral grit sticks to diced pieces of fruit and, by offering small amounts once a week, hobbyists should not be concerned about giving too much.