Hi and welcome to the My Parrot Shop Newsletter for July 2009! In this issue we have some wonderful new products to show you, a special request for photos needed for a magazine article, an FYI on category changes, and the return of the Keiko baby blog.
Acrylic Toys for Medium-Large Birds
Fourcross
This large acrylic hanging toy is a great one for the large parrots or medium parrots with large aspirations. Four large barbells with an acrylic washer on each move up and down freely within the constraints of an acrylic cross base that dangles from a nickel plated chain. A colourful addition to your birds toy box that will last a long time.
Ultra tough resin dominos with plastic painted dots dangle from a big twisted acrylic cross to tempt your feathered compatriot to play. All strung up with nickel plated chain this toy is great for medium to large birds or even the ambitious small bird. The dots on the dominoes are deeply dimpled and there isn’t a parrot out there that doesn’t delight in exploring the indentations with their tongue.
This awesome bolt-on toy is a super cage adornment. Bolted onto the cage with super-sized acrylic washers the base cross then spins freely on its axis making the various oversized beads and baubles shift in tantalising ways. A big hit with our resident macaw and well recommended. Large and non-toxic this is a great acrylic toy for the medium to large birds.
As mentioned is a previous newsletter Caroline is writing for the companion parrot section of the Australia Parrot Society Magazine. She is now sharing the privilege with Nicole Arkinstall, avian vet nurse and proprietor of Bird Boarding in Coburg Victoria.
One of the intended future articles is a guide to setting up your home for a companion parrot and they need some photos! If you are particularly proud of the way you’ve set up your living room or bird room, kitchen, play area etc for your feathered friend, we’d love to get an image from you! Distance shots AND close ups are useful. Feel free to call us first if you're not sure what photos would be useful :)
Over the next few days we’ll be rearranging the products on our website into new categories. Hopefully this will make it easier for you to find the product you're after! We're going to combine a few categories together, while creating new categories such as Foraging Toys and Training Toys.
We hope this won’t cause too much confusion in the short term, but we’re sure it will aid your browsing in the long term. Don’t forget you can access subcategories via the left hand menu bar; you just hover your mouse over the main category heading and the subcategories within will appear just to the right. You can also use the Search feature to find what you want (there's some Search Tips at the bottom of our June 2007 newsletter).
New Chain and Rope!
We have finally gotten our booties into gear to provide on our website various extremely useful chain and rope by the metre.
The Stainless Steel Chain is intended for those of you looking for ways to rig something up in your cage or aviary, or for toy making.
Plastic Chain – another long overdue addition. Plastic chain is often a great toy all by itself, can also be used to rig things, and has a vast array of applications for foraging and regular toys alike.
We’re also pleased to be able to add Abaca Rope. Use it for toy making, or to create your own rope perches and swings. Just a length with a few knots can be a very practical ladder to the cage for wing clipped birds. The best thing about Abaca is its safe to wash or use outside. It doesn’t mould or develop mildew.
All these products are provided by the metre and will be cut to the total length ordered. Go crazy!
Made of colourful acrylic, the crazy leather box is sure to drive your feathered friend crazy with intrigue. The tough acrylic box is stuffed to the rim with a copious quantity of scrap vegetable tanned leather. Just watch your bird’s belly feathers ruffle as they try to get at it all through the holes and shapes on the sides.
Why not fill the box up with treats, toys parts, beads or twigs and leaves to add dimension to this versatile foraging toy! Or make it a nutritional toy with spinach, silver beet and sprouted seed.
For added fun, there is 100% cotton rope, natural sisal rope and plastic beads threaded for your parrot to unravel, untie, chew, bite and demolish.
Avi Care is a general disinfectant for use in animal environments. It is a simple and easy product to integrate into your normal cleaning routine. While it's top notch at killing off nasty bugs, it’s safe for general skin contact and the like, and does not require rinsing off.
Available sizes
Avi Care Concentrate 100mL
Avi Care Concentrate 500mL
Avi Care RTU (Ready To Use) 500mL
Avi Care Concentrate 5L (this is available by special order - please email us to enquire)
After the Penguins and others last time, we've added six more beautiful birds to our Gallery. About time we had a Corella on display. The new ones start at the bottom of page 7 of the Gallery. As always, we love seeing your photos so please keep sending them to us, especially ones showing our products as it helps everyone understand how big they are.
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.
The continuing saga of introducing a baby human into a Macaw household. January (yes, we're a bit behind)
. . .
Henry is no longer a baby blob, he has blossomed into a functioning human being with moving parts, albeit uncoordinated and jerky moving parts, but he can sit and reach for things and play with things and jerk his arms in joy when he sees something he likes. And he really likes the pets. When a cat walks past he grins like a maniac, when Keiko flies to her Get a Grip he stares in wonder. His all time favourite activity is bouncing in his Jumping Joey in my office doorway squealing at me and then doing a quick turn-about to face Keiko in her cage on the opposite wall in the living room and squealing at her. Keiko will occasionally squeal back and if they really get going it can get quite noisy. Though that noise is nothing like the shower we had the other day!
On occasion I have had both Henry and Keiko join me in the shower. It takes a bit of coordination, and I prefer to do it when Keiko is in a more placid mood. But usually I have Henry sitting on the bath mat behind the glass partition while Keiko sits on the towel-warming rack. I then have my shower. Most of the time Keiko just sits on the towel rail, preens & chews holes in the towels, while Henry sits behind the glass shower partition and watches her preen and chew the towels until I’m ready to bathe him. The other day though, Keiko was obviously in the mood for a shower too and I decided that I’d oblige. I unfolded her shower perch from the wall, pumped up the sprayer and left it spraying from a shelf directed over the perch. Keiko flew down and immediately started basking in the mist. After a short time she began the more energetic part of her shower routine and started flying from perch to shower screen to towel rail, flapping her wings and occasionally hitching a lift on my hand to get under the main rainfall of the shower. Henry thought it was wonderful and started to coo and squeal and yell “ba ba ba!” or “da da da!” or “ma ma ma!”.
Before too long Keiko was soaking wet and making things wobble with her landings (that’s right, she keeps flying about even when wet – it makes her very heavy footed!). Henry still sitting on the floor behind the screen is laughing and grinning and yelling his limited vocab. When I folded away the shower perch (limiting Keiko to the towel rail and shower screen for her antics) and picked up Henry for his wash Keiko got all excited and started on her more extensive vocabulary. While Henry enjoyed HIS shower Keiko greeted him with her fifty different intonations of Hello before telling him to “turn around”, “wave”, “step up” and do the “eagle”, providing demonstrations to boot! When Henry started leaning all over the place to watch Keiko round my shoulders, I started laughing and then Keiko started on her high pitch screams (much like a child’s), head shaking and eye pinning. It was all very loud (especially in the echoing confines of the bathroom) and joyous and probably would have continued for quite some time if I hadn’t started feeling guilty about the water restrictions!
Welcome Guest
As mentioned is a previous newsletter Caroline is writing for the companion parrot section of the Australia Parrot Society Magazine. She is now sharing the privilege with Nicole Arkinstall, avian vet nurse and proprietor of 
