Welcome to the My Parrot Shop Newsletter for February 2009, and a belated Happy New Year from us. Our thoughts go out to those who have suffered due to the Victorian bushfire tragedy.
We've just added about 35 new products to the website, read on...
Just Naturals Adventure Playground
The artisans at Just Naturals have released the first of their series of playstands and what a treat for the small birds!
The playground features four perches at varied heights, a swing, a ladder, a banksia pod and pinecone chew and much much more. The sturdy, easily cleaned base is backed with rubber matting to protect your surfaces, and all metal components are bird-safe stainless steel.
Measuring 63 x 51 x 44cm and weighing in at just under 6kg its also a nicely portable stand so you can take your bird’s fun from room to room! We’re very much looking forward to the rest of the playstand range!
For all you crafty folk out there, we are sure you’re going to have a ball with the latest new product uploads! We have 24 new toy parts up on the website for this newsletter. 24!!!
Plus a 25th cherry on top to be found in the gift section - a cockatoo card kit.
We've been busy designing fun new bird toys in our own My Parrot range of toys. Here's a taste of our new offerings, with a link to all the new toys below...
You're a Star!
One for the narcissistic birds out there :) A double sided, star shaped, acrylic mirror hanging from a stainless steel chain with a sweetly chiming stainless steel bell beneath it. Something shiny and reflective for your little celebrity birds to poke, ping and preen.
Gyro
A dice threaded on poly rope inside a colourful plastic ring. Fantastically fiddly when the dice spins and slides on the poly rope. A great foot toy for birds who love to get their beak stuck in.
Traffic Lights
A colourful chiming toy to chew. Large wooden beads and wooden reels are strung on stainless steel wire, with a sturdy 3cm wide stainless steel bell that chimes and jingles when your bird chews on the wood.
We’re sorry to report that due to production difficulties we’ve had to discontinue the Bird & Pet range of formulated diet on our website.
We have replaced them with the Vetafarm range. Nutritionally the Vetafarm range is top notch, the ingredients are of an excellent quality, and the resulting taste is very palatable! Best of all, being made in Australia, this range of pellets ultimately arrives at your door in a very fresh state!
Those of you with fussy eaters will be pleased to know that most birds go from Bird & Pet to Vetafarm without any fuss whatsoever.
When you next need to purchase your pellets, be sure to have a look around the different products. For instance there is a paradise mix that eclectus parrots absolutely love and there are some awesome chunky macaw nuts that really are nut size! Within the product descriptions of every product you will find a guide to what Vetafarm pellet best suits your bird as well as the usual Q&A about pellets in general.
Farewell to our Beaded Cholla. We’ve struggled to keep this toy in production for almost a year now and have finally given up due to difficulties in sourcing appropriate cholla (a type of cactus wood). The Beaded Cholla has been on our website from the beginning and has been among our most popular toys, being purchased repeatedly by many a customer who have cholla-obsessed birds! We are sad to see it go.
However, just so you know, we have intentions to get in a couple of cholla toys by other manufacturers to fill the gap (and one of them’s a doozy; it’s HUGE!!) Look out for new cholla toys in our next newsletter.
Natural Swing Refills
By popular demand, you can now get perch refills for the Just Naturals stainless steel refillable swing!
These perches come pre-drilled and cut to the correct length for use with the twisted stainless steel swing base. All you need is a screw driver!
Just Naturals use a variety of safe tree species suitable for perching and chewing, including Eucalyptus, Stringy Bark, Casuarina, Black Wattle, Queensland Brush Box, Callistemon, Banksia and Acacia.
Last newsletter we asked for no-obligation expressions of interest in us arranging cages wider than 40". Of course, as mentioned earlier, our contact form wasn't working. Which might explain (or might not) the lack of response we received. So we will repeat the exercise just in case. If you are interested in the thought of having a whopper size cage let us know, as we have a catalogue from the manufacturer full of them, and with enough interest we will consider arranging a special order through the importer.
We also mentioned that we'd have other cages on our website by Christmas. We really really tried, but we've just had the worst luck, with things falling through all over the place. Essentially the supplier had them in the catalogue, but not actually in stock.
We have found more again, but this time we won't make any promises...
Blog: Who Can Scream Louder?
The continuing saga of introducing a baby human into a Macaw household.
Late August...
Yelling. Lots and lots of yelling. First Henry. Then Keiko. Then both together, each with their own carefully modulated dissonance combining to form an unholy torture on our eardrums.
Keiko is normally a relatively quiet parrot. She lets ripwith the occasional high pitched scream during an excited moment (which I actually find quite endearing) and then maybe once a fortnight she’ll do some random yelling for a couple of minutes. Certainly nothing worthy of complaint. But right now she is driving Richard and me nuts! I’ll have just sat down to feed Henry when Keiko will start some of the most obnoxious screaming a parrot is capable of. And there’s not much I can do about it; either I detach Henry and make him release blood curdling screams for the next five minutes whilst I deal with Keiko (i.e. remove her to her outdoor aviary where I’m less likely to throttle her) or I cradle the baby’s ears for the duration of the feed, all the time wondering if I should be looking into facilities for the deaf in my community.
Late September…
It actually took Richard and me a whole month to stop lamenting Keiko’s yelling and actually put our heads together to find a solution. And of course, wouldn’t you know it, Keiko ceased the horrible noise (mainly) anyway.
Reflecting on the matter there definitely seemed to be a correlation between general house hold noise levels and Keiko’s volume control. We noticed her calm down considerably about a week after all the relatives left (of which there were plenty). And then even more so around the same time that Henry turned into a happy baby that would even occasionally sleep. For the first time since Henry’s birth we had quiet on all fronts. Ah, what bliss!
Thinking even more on it I figure Keiko’s yelling can probably also be partially blamed on the turn of season (my little girl’s growing up!). Whatever the cause, she has settled a bit, as has Henry. Sanity is returning to our household.
On the double-plus side Henry seems like a bit more than a blob this month too. He kinda wiggles too. We knew there had to be a reason we wanted one!
Welcome Guest
Farewell to our Beaded Cholla. We’ve struggled to keep this toy in production for almost a year now and have finally given up due to difficulties in sourcing appropriate cholla (a type of cactus wood). The Beaded Cholla has been on our website from the beginning and has been among our most popular toys, being purchased repeatedly by many a customer who have cholla-obsessed birds! We are sad to see it go. 
Last newsletter we asked for no-obligation expressions of interest in us arranging cages wider than 40". Of course, as mentioned earlier, our contact form wasn't working. Which might explain (or might not) the lack of response we received. So we will repeat the exercise just in case. If you are interested in the thought of having a whopper size cage let us know, as we have a catalogue from the manufacturer full of them, and with enough interest we will consider arranging a special order through the importer. 
