First bird show impressions

[Breeze]

Hello,
recently i went to my first bird show and the experience was not that good The birds there were stunning but the cages they were kept in were horrid! they were so small, i seen a female caique who had plucked herself i felt so sorry for her! There were african greys who's heads were touching the top of the cage. There was about 4 caiques squished into individual small spaces who looked terrified. just overall it was a very traumatic experience. Now i don't know if this is the usual, but i feel like it should not be like this..

 

[MonicaMc]

Sadly, it generally is.... if you have a lot of birds, but you only have x-amount of space to put them, small cages get pretty popular really fast! But it's only supposed to be temporary!

 

[SilverSage]

Small cages aren’t too bad of its temporary, but the rampant disease and selling birds off cheap like overstocked consumables really bothers me...


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[ChristaNL]

Yup- I totally agree on the disease part.


Went to one with one of my friends (when I was parrotless at the time, would not have risked it otherwise) to show him what we did when I was young (we had shows with chickens, rabbits etc. and the occasional exotic bird that got jugded on merits.)
He grew up in a city so had a wildly different childhood.



He promply came down with an impressive case of Psittacosis / ornithosis.
So much for a fun day out!
(As far as I know about 17 people got really sick that day, I've had it before so only mildly fluelike symptoms for me every time.)

It's not just birds who get into trouble in those places!


(and don't even buy a bird there unless you have kick-ass quarantaine-options, esp. if you are already a birdowner )

 

[SilverSage]

Yep! A freind of mine recently brought home two adorable conures showing no signs of ill health, and they both have Polyoma. I DO have really good quarantine options set up, and ended up taking in her existing birds because she had not practiced strict quarantine and now her whole house is a danger to birds.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[EllenD]

I just found this thread, and I can honestly say that most every "bird show" or "expo" or "birdmart" that I've ever been to, and I've been to many of them in different states, has been great for buying bird-related merchandise and food/treats very cheaply, but has also been a complete and very sad nightmare for looking at live birds. Period. There hasn't been much difference regarding this impression over the years or all of the different shows I've been to.

If you are planning on going to a bird show/expo strictly to buy many different types of handmade, awesome toys, play-stands, wood-perches, cages, travel carriers, wholesale or bulk pellets, seed-mixes, treats, snacks, hand-feeding formula, hand-raising/hand-feeding supplies and equipment like Brooders, Incubators, etc., and you want to get great deals and usually save more than 50%+ from even online prices, then these are the places you want to go, and you'll come home with quite a haul of great merchandise and will have spent very little money...And if you go on the LAST DAY of the show/expo, that's when you'll get the really insane deals, as the retailers don't want to haul all of the stuff home, especially the ones who don't own or operate pet shops/bird stores to take the merchandise back to. The private retailers that make their own toys, build their own play-stands and perches, and who make/bake/cook/package their own bird food/treats and will just have to load their trucks back up, take the stuff the home, unload the truck, and pack the stuff away again inside of their homes want to dump as much of their merchandise as possible, and on the last day of the shows they just give the stuff away....Literally, a lot of them actually give the stuff away.

I always go to these shows on the very last day (I would never buy a live bird at a show/expo, I only go for merchandise), and I go just in-time to scope-out what merchandise I'm interested in, and then ATTACK right before move-out time...So for example, if the show/expo ends on Sunday at 5:00 p.m., then I might go on Friday or Saturday just to see what's there and what I'm interested in, but usually I won't go until Sunday, as there's no reason to waste precious time looking for stuff that has already been sold since you were there on Friday or Saturday and first saw it...So instead, I'll usually just go on Sunday, and if the show ends at 5:00 p.m I'll get there between 1:00-2:00 and hit every single booth/stand, and sometimes, as anal as I am, I'll bring a notebook or use my phone and write down the name of the retailer, where their booth/stand is, if it's a huge show, and what it is that they are selling that I want to buy, along with the prices. Then around 3:00-3:30, that's when I pounce!!! I once got a huge Manzanita play-stand that had a price-tag of $199 on it for $75...And the best deals that I've gotten are by far the toys!!! Usually what they'll do during the last hours of the show with the toys (go for the retailers who have massive amounts of toys) is give you some crazy bulk deal. So if you show-up at 4:30 and there's only 30 minutes left to the show, and a retailer has hundreds of toys, and you walk up and ask them "How much are the toys?" (ignore the price tags on them), 9 times out of 10 they'll think about it for a second and then say something like "Right now, since it's the end of the show, if you buy 5 toys I'll give you 5 free", or some other crazy deal. I have gotten huge wooden toys that would cost $30+ a piece at Petco or Petsmart for $5 a piece this way. And if you need a cage then you definitely want to do the same thing, and make sure you target a retailer that has lots and lots of cages, and that has multiples of the cage you want to buy stacked-up and just sitting there...Remember, they have to load all of those cages back up and take them back home again, and if they have 5+ of the same cage sitting there to pack back up, just ask them what their bottom-line is on one of them right now, cash on the spot that very minute...Usually you'll save 50% or more...

***The best tip I can give you when buying merchandise at a show/expo is to not try to wheel and deal on "brand-name" merchandise that a retailer is selling. These are usually the stands/booths from pet shops/bird shops and that sell brand-name stuff in their stores. In-fact, you're much better-off to totally stay-away from any stands/booths that are from a pet shop/bird shop or a company/corporation. These places have already paid the manufacturers for these types of goods, and they aren't going to lose money on anything when they have a store that they can just take the stuff back to and sell from there at full-retail. You need to stick to the private individuals who make their own toys, play-stands and perches, etc. It's amazing the craftsmanship of some of the homemade, hand-built perches, stands, and toys at these shows that are built and being sold by private individuals who are doing it simply because it's a hobby that they love. These people pay pennies to make most of the toys, as they buy the parts/pieces in-bulk online, and it's the same with the people who build the huge, gorgeous, hand-crafted play-stands and perches. A lot of those retailers are professional carpenters or woodworkers who build perches and play-stands as a hobby, and they collect the beautiful Manzanita branches outside for free in their yards, lol. Or in my neck of the woods (Pennsylvania), where there are no Manzanita trees growing, a lot of them know someone who lives out west and sends them mass amounts of raw branches, or they use local wood, such as grapevine, pear, cherry, different maples, oaks, birches, etc. So basically it costs these people $0 to build these huge, beautiful, wooden stands and free-standing perches, well except for the $10 for the casters and maybe a couple bucks for the wood used to build the platform...The bottom-line is that the only thing building these toys, wooden stands, etc. costs them is their time to build them, so if they're asking $200-$300 for a large-size Manzanita perch/stand, simply because that's what the large pet shops and brands set their MSRP's at, but it only cost these private individuals a couple of bucks and their time to make perches/stands and toys, and they don't want to haul all of the stuff back home again, they are much more likely to sell their merch extremely cheaply, as no matter what they sell it for they aren't going to lose any money....

So for buying STRICTLY MERCHANDISE, you cannot beat most large bird shows, expo's, and birdmart's....HOWEVER, I would not ever, ever, ever buy a live bird from one of these shows...and with good reason...

Anyone who has been to a large-scale bird show, expo, or birdmart knows just how large they usually are, how many dozens, if not hundreds of retailers/booths/stands there are, how close-together they are located, etc. And obviously this makes it inevitable for any live birds that are at the show to be extremely close to one-another. And a lot of these retailers/breeders bring literally hundreds of birds with them! I'm not exaggerating, I've seen breeders of Finches, Canaries, Budgies, Cockatiels, Parrotlets, different species of Conures, IRN's, Quakers, and other small to medium size birds have literally dozens of them in a single cage, with multiple cages stacked one on top of the other. I've seen single flight-cages that had at least 100 Finches, Canaries, Budgies, or Parrotlets inside them. And even the breeders/stores who sell larger parrots such as Macaws, African Greys, Cockatoos, etc. usually bring along at least a dozen or more of each species they breed/sell, especially if they're babies. And then of course they also usually ALL bring along their own personal, pet birds too; most every booth and stand has at least one pet bird who belongs to the owner or one of the employees, and is usually not on a harness/leash and who is hopping/flying all over the place, often interacting closely with the birds from the neighboring stands/booths. And you've got thousands of people (and tons of children with dirty fingers who are not watched nor controlled by their parents) sticking their fingers in every single bird cage at the show, touching every single bird that they can, feeding junk food to every bird they can, etc.

So it's not at all surprising that you could go to any bird show/expo/birdmart and buy a hand-raised, baby bird that is fully weaned, who looks great and has a great personality, and that has actually been taken to a CAV by the breeder/retailer and been given a clean bill of health and who is sold to you with a health-guarantee, and then a month or two later the bird dies from an infection that they acquired during the bird show and AFTER they had been given the clean bill of health/health certificate by the CAV...And of course most of the health-guarantees that go along with the birds they sell are only good for a couple of weeks to maybe a month max (and a month guarantee is rare), and because the incubation period for most infections, illnesses, and serious disease that effect birds is usually at least a month. So even if you have a necropsy done and you prove that the bird you just bought 2 months prior with a health-certificate died of an avian-disease that can only be acquired by contact with a living host, and you have no other birds and the bird has not been in contact with any other bird since the day you brought them home from the show, you'll most-likely have to take the breeder/retailer to small-claims court to get your money back, and if you lose then you're out not only the cost of the bird and the heartache that comes along with losing a bird, but you'll also be out the court costs, which are usually more than the bird cost to begin with...

 

[ChristaNL]

Ellen: this should totally be a sticky!!
(are you keeping track of everything you post? I think you may have several "parrotting with uncommon good common sense" books here!)


Great advise for beginners and longer time birdkeepers alike.


Thank you Breeze for bringing this up!