January 2010
Aristophanes, my gorgeous scarlet macaw, is playing in the laundry. Actually, he is playing "King of the Laundry Basket"; he becomes a bit protective of and formidable about his play area. Nothing I can’t handle, because even though he is a macaw, and a tough one at that, I am bigger than he is. Emma is taking charge of Zeke’s cage where, he too, becomes a tough guy and a conqueror. Zeke is riding on my shoulder and accompanying me around the house as I do my morning chores. Sometimes that little cockatiel and big Amazon play together on his cage or on the floor; sometimes Zeke wants nothing to do with Emma and chooses me as his playmate. He flies through the house until he finds me and we hang out.
The birds need this out time so their minds do not rot from "Cage-rot-i-tis".. I make sure they are out and stimulated as long as I am home. I often think about he realization that they would out exploring, playing and investigating all day if they were free in the wild, unfortunately they are not. I do my best to give them as much to do as possible. I hope everyone does. It is something I counsel people about before they adopt a bird from me or buy one from a pet shop or breeder. Keeping a parrot in a cage all the time is cruel and you should not have one if you do that.
This is the first meeting of the new year, and considering that our meetings are based around the birds we keep, I hope that everyone has been thinking about how to make our birds’ lives more enriched and happy. To that end, I have enlisted Dr. Rick Stein, our local veterinarian who works on birds to give us some advise and answer our medical questions about them. He is our first guest speaker this year. I have many more programs planned and am hoping to make this a banner year for our club. By the way, if anyone wants to organize a club trip to any of the places we discussed, please let me know and I will help any way I can.
Next month, February (besides being my birthday; I will be 24) we have "A Helping Wing" coming to speak to us about the birds they re-home. I imagine they will be bringing several birds with them as long as the weather is not too cold. They did a great job at our show and one their birds, a scarlet macaw whom they rehabilitated, won best of show. It is one of the things that makes our show more special than most. The horrible history of this macaw combined with how well he turned out were major factors in our judge, Julia Nelson, picking him as the show "champion".
I have invited Craig Russell, the president of the SPPA (Society for the Preservation of Poultry Antiquities) to do a talk for us, in March, on the old, heritage breeds of poultry that were developed and used in the United States and the rest of the world. Today, with factory farming as part of agribusiness and its inherent cruelty so prevalent, we tend to forget that there was a time when we weren’t keeping genetically engineered chickens in cages where they can barely move and killing and eating chickens when they are 6 weeks old. There are hundreds of breeds of chickens, some incredibly beautiful and useful, that were developed in the 19th and 20th centuries, but are rarely seen today. Craig will talk about these breeds and bring some chickens in for us to see. Craig was
here a few years ago and was very well received by our club.
We have some other exciting programs coming up in the coming months which I am sure everyone will appreciate from which we all can learn a great deal.
I want to wish everyone a happy and healthy new year and new decade.
Be kind to all animals and each other (oh, especially to elephants).......
With Love,
Richie
The birds need this out time so their minds do not rot from "Cage-rot-i-tis".. I make sure they are out and stimulated as long as I am home. I often think about he realization that they would out exploring, playing and investigating all day if they were free in the wild, unfortunately they are not. I do my best to give them as much to do as possible. I hope everyone does. It is something I counsel people about before they adopt a bird from me or buy one from a pet shop or breeder. Keeping a parrot in a cage all the time is cruel and you should not have one if you do that.
This is the first meeting of the new year, and considering that our meetings are based around the birds we keep, I hope that everyone has been thinking about how to make our birds’ lives more enriched and happy. To that end, I have enlisted Dr. Rick Stein, our local veterinarian who works on birds to give us some advise and answer our medical questions about them. He is our first guest speaker this year. I have many more programs planned and am hoping to make this a banner year for our club. By the way, if anyone wants to organize a club trip to any of the places we discussed, please let me know and I will help any way I can.
Next month, February (besides being my birthday; I will be 24) we have "A Helping Wing" coming to speak to us about the birds they re-home. I imagine they will be bringing several birds with them as long as the weather is not too cold. They did a great job at our show and one their birds, a scarlet macaw whom they rehabilitated, won best of show. It is one of the things that makes our show more special than most. The horrible history of this macaw combined with how well he turned out were major factors in our judge, Julia Nelson, picking him as the show "champion".
I have invited Craig Russell, the president of the SPPA (Society for the Preservation of Poultry Antiquities) to do a talk for us, in March, on the old, heritage breeds of poultry that were developed and used in the United States and the rest of the world. Today, with factory farming as part of agribusiness and its inherent cruelty so prevalent, we tend to forget that there was a time when we weren’t keeping genetically engineered chickens in cages where they can barely move and killing and eating chickens when they are 6 weeks old. There are hundreds of breeds of chickens, some incredibly beautiful and useful, that were developed in the 19th and 20th centuries, but are rarely seen today. Craig will talk about these breeds and bring some chickens in for us to see. Craig was
here a few years ago and was very well received by our club.
We have some other exciting programs coming up in the coming months which I am sure everyone will appreciate from which we all can learn a great deal.
I want to wish everyone a happy and healthy new year and new decade.
Be kind to all animals and each other (oh, especially to elephants).......
With Love,
Richie