In pet shops or other stores, one can find different seed mixtures for budgies. The prices vary in a large range and most people might think that the most expensive mixtures are the healthiest ones. This is not always correct, so you have to know what is important about bird food. Some of those seeds seem to be ok concerning the expiry date on the package. But is this food really fresh and healthy? What about the nutrition values? If food is stored in a wrong way or if it was exposed to the sun or heat, the vitamins vanish and in the worst case the seeds are no longer good enough for sprouting. The healthy contents may have been destroyed long before you bought the food and even if you serve it to your pets immediately. In such a case, the lack of vitamins may cause health problems that are unacceptable according to my opinion. A budgie with a poor diet can, for example, suffer from paralysis of its legs - this is frightening not only for the bird! To make one thing clear: I am not saying that every budgie food one can buy in a pet shop is bad or too old. But I made too many bad experiences with such seed mixtures, and have decided not to buy them anymore. Needless to say, it is up to you which food you are going to buy for your birds in the future.
Those of you who want to check how fresh the bird food actually is can easily test it. First you have to pick 100 grains and put them into water for about six hours. After that, pour off the water and keep them in a warm place for about 24 hours. The grains need to be moist all the time, otherwise they will not be able to develop sprouts. After 24 hours, you should count the sprouted grains and the ones that have not sprouted. Of course not every grain will sprout within those 24 hours, but if the ratio of sprouted and un-sprouted grains is less than 1:1, the food is too old. My grain mixture that I order from specialised bird food providers shows about 95 % of sprouted grains after such experiments.
In this chapter of my website Birds Online you will find a number of seeds that are described and shown in detail. I don't recommend to create your own mixture of bird seeds from those single ingredients because budgies need a well balanced diet and it is complicated to fulfil their body's needs concerning energy, minerals and vitamins by mixing seeds haphazardly. If you can get a recipe for a budgie seed mixture from a vet, you can of course create your own bird food.
This chapter in Turkish on muhabbetkusu.org 
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