"Importing" my beloved to Canada - Please help!

[OrrinocosMom]

Hello Dear Bird Loving Friends! I am finally moving back to Canada (from Maine) to be near my baby granddaughter. . . but I have just spent the last 2.5 hours on the Canada border website researching what is required to bring Noco across the border and it is HELLISHLY complicated. I am terrified of the process - They list (on about 10 different pages) forms and procedures that are really hard to follow, do not tell me WHERE to get all the forms or which ones I need, they call for various CFIA veterinary inspections (among others), and lastly and most horrifying is the requirement for FORTY FIVE DAYS of quarantine in an approved facility with a certified vet on duty and all this at my expense. But nowhere does it say WHAT that expense will be or how one finds such a facility. There are NO LIVE HUMANS to ask - it is all online. I am heartbroken and so worried about how this will all go. . . SOOOOoooooo I am reaching out to all of YOU in the hopes that someone out there has imported a bird from the USA to Canada. (I wanted to import my three pet hens as well, but after all this I fear that it might be best to leave them with my sister who loves hens and has some herself.) ANY WORDS OF WISDOM appreciated. Please reply IF YOU HAVE IMPORTED. Thank you so so much. Love, Maya (& Noco).

 

[saxguy64]

Maya, so nice to see you back! I wish I had some helpful information for you, but I have no experience with that. One of the other mods @Terry57 moved from the states to Canada years ago, but I don't know if she brought any birds with her. If nothing else, perhaps she might be a contact as someone "on the inside" who might know how the system works or point you to who to talk to. Maybe not, but worth a shot.

Hope you're doing well!

 

[PrimorandMoxi]

FORTY FIVE DAYS!!!
that's effin crazy.
I'd die.

There must be a way? no...?

 

[OrrinocosMom]

Maya, so nice to see you back! I wish I had some helpful information for you, but I have no experience with that. One of the other mods @Terry57 moved from the states to Canada years ago, but I don't know if she brought any birds with her. If nothing else, perhaps she might be a contact as someone "on the inside" who might know how the system works or point you to who to talk to. Maybe not, but worth a shot.

Hope you're doing well!

Hi and THANK YOU for the welcome back! I have been so swamped with my work (I work in hospice - it seems to be a big season for dying lately . .) and getting my move happening. I have, since posting that question, learned a TON about how this is all done - and it is a HUGE undertaking. I can, and will, at some point when it is all done, write a post for anyone looking to move with a bird. It is insanely complex and expensive (by the end of this all, I will have spent between $700-$1000 just on exporting my guy - nthen there is moving the rest of life. . . $$$$). But right now off the top, let me say to anyone planning this, that you need to begin the process many months before your cross border date. There is a mandatory 90 day quarantine (thankfully in your home) and certain applications must be submitted with 60 days for processing. (And you do need a specific date of exit/entry.) It is a lot. And nerve wracking.

SO, now I shall ask - - PLEASE ALL WHO READ THIS, if you have good thoughts to spare:

CALL ON THE GODS OF BIRDS AND BORDERS AND SMOOTH TRANSITIONS FOR US!
Hold thoughts of Noco, his three doggie siblings and I, with every step of this journey going smoothly and gracefully - and the five of us and our belongings making it - as easily as possible - to our new home. THANK YOU.

 

[saxguy64]

Aaahhh yes, I totally understand about hospice. We work closely with our local organization, and our daughter now fresh out of nursing school has taken a job with them.

So happy you seem to have worked out all the nitty gritty of the move, I know it's a lot, but hopefully worth it once you're there and settled and can be close by to your granddaughter. Wishing you well, and prayers for an easy, uneventful crossing to the north land!