How many feathers has a budgie on its body?

What do you think?

A) 100 - 200
B) 1,000 - 2,000
C) 2,000 - 3,000
D) More than 5,000

I'll start by saying that the average number of hairs on a person's head is about 100,000. Most people shed between 50 and 100 hairs daily. According to estimates, the average person has about 5 million hairs on their body, varying slightly per different hair color.

Image © lib.rus.ec/b/180824

Now, if you guessed answer C for budgies, you are correct! A full-grown budgie has between 2,000 and 3,000 feathers on its body. Isn't that amazing for such a little bird? I don't know if certain color types or mutations have more feathers than others, but I suppose that goes for Whipper the Budgie.

Losing tail feathers?

What happens if tail feathers (or other feathers) fall out?

This means your budgie is probably molting. Luckily, the feathers will come back in no time, because the flight feathers in the tail are the most important for flight and essential for your budgie's survival.

Photo © Hanz on the Talk Budgies forum

Why do budgies lose their feathers? Feathers lose some of their insulative and protective qualities over time. If you wore the same clothes every day, the same would happen to you and eventually those clothes wouldn't keep you warm anymore. A budgie's answer to this is to generate a new bunch of feathers.