Joys of Parrothood:

The Impossible Dream

How many adults still consider Dr. Doolittle bedside reading material?

I tell people that the copy at my bedside is for my children (and now my grandchildren) but the truth is that it is for me.

You see, my lifelong dream has always been to be surrounded by parrots. Now I am living that dream. I love sharing the joy of birds with others and the fulfillment that their company provides.

The mission of Parrots Naturally is to educate special people about the joys and rewards of bringing a parrot into the family flock.

One recent morning after a night of feeding newly hatched Eclectus every three hours, I opened one eye to see four Blue and Gold Macaws sharing a stand at the foot of my bed. Bill was in the process of building new aviaries and transitioning some of the breeders to their new quarters. As I looked at these four brilliant birds, I was thinking that we only had two Blue and Gold pets, so who were the other two sitting so majestically on the top rung of the stand?

Amazingly they were Bonnie and Rocky, the parents of our pets Wanda and Officer Troi. The parents had not been held since they were set up for breeding five years ago. Both had eagerly stepped up one on each of Bill's arms and he had already given them a badly needed shower in the master bath. When I awoke they were busy reacquainting themselves with their four year old and two year old daughters.

It was truly amazing to watch the reunited family spend the next several days together while the parents new home was being prepared and reflect upon how it all began.

In 1978, from a barber in Simi Valley California, we purchased our first parrot, BoBo, a hand fed baby yellow-naped Amazon who had been raised on a diet of seed and tortillas. The diet should have been a clue that he was a smuggled bird. How naive were we, as were many others who could not believe that our birds could have been stolen from their nests in the wild.

During the next few years we were too busy raising a human family and working in the field of clinical laboratory medicine to actively participate in the Avian movement that was developing in the US. We dedicated many hours over these years to learn as much as we could from the best of the aviculturists as we religiously studied every avian publication, and read and reread about the experiences of different breeders, in hopes of some day raising our own baby parrots.

With much excitement, we purchased our first breeding pair of Eclectus 12 years ago, followed shortly by a wonderful pair of Blue and Gold Macaws, our magical, mystical pair. Over the past 10 years we have acquired a flock of more than 100 parrot pets and breeding birds. Many of our breeding birds were pets, often raised with a bird of the opposite sex for future breeding potential.

Now Bill and have three separate callings: managing the home breeding facility, maintaining a (hygienic) nursery in the shop and what I call the commercial aspects of presenting to the bird lover the very best of diets, toys, cages and supplies that have been home tested in our aviaries.

We've been told time and again that this fine balancing act of raising parrots with integrity and managing a successful bird store selling healthy and well-adjusted baby birds whose needs come first is an impossible dream. I like to think that we live in a world where this kind of integrity is possible and can be successful.

With more than thirty years in clinical diagnosis and testing, we think we provide a unique technical perspective.

First is our firm insistence on a closed aviary, which our experience tells us can provide the optimal environment to keep and raise birds. We can control the health of the parents, provide the best possible housing and nutrition and ensure their ability to produce healthy, beautiful offspring. We've raised eyebrows at bird shows by posting pictures of our babies safe at home in the nursery rather than bringing them along.

Unlike birds who are hatched into assembly-line parrot mills and suffer the horrors and indignities of bird brokers and vendors (all too common at many other pet stores), our birds gain the benefit of being hatched into a warm and loving cross-species family (100 breeder and pet parrots) that looks after their emotional as well as their physical needs. We don't want any of our babies to end up as an ad in the classified pages! We've been close to giving up more than once in the last four years, mostly when the hours have become staggering and we realized something had to give but it couldn't be the birds.

The truth is that the birds are the soul of the business and we are not shop keepers, we are scientists and bird lovers who have opened a shop. BoBo is still with us, now being entertained by Alfie, another yellow nape who retired from a busy career entertaining and making commercials.

I feel like there is still so much to learn about these incredible creatures and hope we can learn fast enough to share the joy and help motivate others to protect and breed them, especially the species so close to extinction. Sharing the joy means seeing a bird friend through the nursery window and telling her to go scrub up and come see my little three day old (1 gram) bumblebees (parrotlets) being fed with a 1 millimeter pipette, whose parents laid out of season and wouldn't feed them; or dragging her to look through the magnifying glass to find that first green or red feather on a four week old Eclectus.

We strive to convey an element of respect for parrots by providing them with as rich, natural and healthy an existence as they might enjoy in the wild. To meet the babies' emotional needs we insist on matching the bird to the potential owner. In effect this amounts to thoroughly interviewing people contemplating the purchase a bird.

We are looking for a total lifetime commitment from people and we try to ask the right questions to ensure the best kind of life for the bird. The entire family has to be included and if a spouse or someone else in the family is hesitant, we trust our instincts and will not sell a bird. We're also not afraid to tell someone that it's not the right time in their life to buy a parrot.

Additionally, we discourage sales to people who do not agree to the diet, housing and interactional needs that we know to be essential to a happy and healthy parrot lifestyle. Such lofty goals and and there are more of them! that require a considerable amount of dedication.

If breeders are committed to the welfare of the birds before they consider making a profit, they may not strike it rich selling parrots, but they can sleep well at night and look their parrots in the eye because they know they have done the best for them that is humanly possible.

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