What I learned was very fascinating.  Yes, it’s true– in general, most scented items like the ones listed above are indeed harmful for our birds.  But, some (very few actually) extremely high quality and high grade essential oils can actually be incredibly beneficial.  I’ve learned so much over the past few months that it’s difficult to compile it all; in writing this post, I changed my “starting point” three times.  But finally I’ve chosen somewhere to start: at the beginning, with the essential oils themselves.

What exactly are essential oils?  At their most basic, they are aromatic, volatile liquids found in plants, and as their name suggests, they are vital for a plant to grow and live.  One website calls them “living energy” and a friend of mine describes them as the life blood of a plant: just like we wouldn’t survive if we didn’t have blood, a plant wouldn’t survive without its essential oils.  They support various life processes and regulate plant functions.  Different oils have many different properties, from healing to purifying to protecting.  Many are antibacterial and antifungal.  Research shows that they may have been used as early as 4,500 BC, and the Ancient Egyptians used them for treating illnesses as well as for religious ceremonies and rituals.

They sound pretty incredible– but there is one big caveat.  Essential oils come in many different grades, and can be easily adulterated with different chemical and synthetic additives in order to make them cheaper to produce for companies.  These essential oils are the reason why the vast majority of parrot owners have always been told that essential oils are a big no-no: these essential oils are actually harmful and toxic to parrots.  Over 90% of essential oils on the market are not of therapeutic grade quality, and even of those that are therapeutic grade, there are differing levels of quality.  This is why it is incredibly important only to buy certain brands of essential oils.

In my research, only two companies are producing oils that are therapeutic grade and high enough quality (with the testing to prove it) to use around parrots.  The most highly recommended one that I have come across is Young Living, who create pure, unadulterated, therapeutic grade essential oils.  They begin with the soil: their plants are only grown on virgin land that has never been treated with pesticides or other harsh chemicals.  Once plants are harvested, they are distilled using a gentle steam-extraction technique that leaves their chemical composition and healing properties in tact.  Every single batch of oils produced is then completely analyzed for purity before being sold, ensuring the highest possible quality.  And unlike any other company, their spectrometry testing is actually available for each oil.  Many big believers and users of essential oils swear by Young Living and only use their oils, exclusively.

But why use them in the first place?  I don’t normally need to “heal” anything in my flock, since (knock on wood) we are lucky enough to be in good health.  (Ironically, we had an emergency situation with Sabrina this week, but the vet has been taking great care of her.  Otherwise, we’ve all been in great health as of late.)  For a few months I wasn’t interested in essential oils, simply because I thought they were more medicinal than anything else.  But when I began reading several reports of essential oils not only healing birds but helping birds’ moods and behavior and hormones, I became fascinated.  I’ve read testimonials of essential oils helping to calm hormonal birds, helping birds overcome the loss of mate or a friend, helping to increase birds’ appetites, helping to reduce screaming, and more.  Even more alluring to me were the many reports I’d read that essential oils also helped the parrot owners themselves: they felt less stress, more calm, more happy, and more at peace when using certain essential oils.  Parrot owners could also safely wear “perfumes” again in the form of essential oils.  But perhaps the most interesting facet of my research on essential oils was that almost all of these reported changes were instant: I saw many people purchase their diffusers and oils and report positive experiences within days!

After several months of deliberation and discussion with many essential oil users (thank you to all of you who answered my barrages of questions!) and essential oil producers, I finally decided that we would also try diffusing and using essential oils.  Although we are all healthy, I would love to see if perhaps some oil blends like Peace & Calming can help to calm down Sabrina a bit, or perhaps encourage her to get along with Charles a bit better.  I’m also interested in Thieves, which many swear by for its cleansing abilities as well as its immune system support.  It’s an all natural antifungal, antibacterial, antimicrobial essential oil that is 100% safe and non-toxic to use around birds.  I finally took the plunge and purchased a diffuser, a model recommended by a holistic vet, along with a few oils to begin with.

I’m taking things very slowly at first while I am still getting started, but hopefully I will have more to report soon.  My diffuser should arrive here on Thursday, and my fancy shmancy oils should be here soon after.  Once those arrive, I’ll post more about how to choose a diffuser and some benefits of different oils and oil blends.  This isn’t an inexpensive investment, but I truly believe that the rewards will be great.

For anybody interested in using essential oils with their parrots, don’t take my word for it: visit Dr. Melissa Shelton’s website on essential oils and animals, or visit the excellent Essential Bird group website.  Read more about Young Living Essential Oils in particular or to get started.  (If you do decide to get started, let me know if you need a referral number as they work through distributors and referrals.)  A little research never hurt!

toys for the littles

Here’s the entire collection of the little bird toys.  I’ll go through them in groups…

preening toys

Here are the preening toys, or any toys with lots of fluffy supreme cotton rope.  I just love them!!  Two of them are on animal-shaped leather bases, a bear and a horse, and they have lovely little beads and baubles on top.  On the top right is based on little vine balls with lots of beads and plastic chain to beak.  So cute!

a close-up of one of the preening toys

My absolute favorite of the preening toys, however, is this little gem.  Based on two lovely pine wood slickety sticks, it is loaded with pacifiers of all colors and some soft cotton rope as well.  I’m going to have a very hard time choosing who gets this one!

toys with mixed textures and colors

The next group of toys have a lovely mixture of natural bases and materials with colorful, beak-able beads.  The one on top is actually the custom toy I purchased for Charles a few months ago, but it turned out so cute that it became a regular!  Charles’s version is blue, so I purchased a purple one for Sabrina.  On the left is an adorable toy that combines willow wood, a rolled up shreddable paper … thing?, seagrass, and a few beads.  It’s actually a foot toy that I’ll be giving to the budgies.  On the right is another custom toy based on a small round of willow wood with lots of cute beads and heavy hemp rope.

two hanging basket toys

Next up are two adorable little hanging baskets, one for each!!  The seagrass one has purple accents for Sabrina and the coconut one has blue and green for Charles.

two natural toys

Finally, there are two natural toys.  Both are based on beautiful and fragrant eucalyptus wood, whichI’d read budgies like in particular, so I asked Danita to use little eucalyptus wood trunks as the bases.  They combine the wood with loofah, seagrass, shredders, and vine stars to make these enriching combinations of textures.

I’m so happy with this bounty of toys!  Danita’s creativity and imagination just astound me.  She always comes up with the most adorable and innovative designs; they never look tired or boring.  I’m glad to know that the budgies have a lot of extra toys waiting for them.  I brought a lot of toys over to my parents’ house for their spare cages and I keep forgetting that we have less toys here than I thought.

Lola's special toys and treats

Of course, I couldn’t leave Lola out of the fun either.  She also received three lovely custom toys and a few shreddable foraging boxes to add to her skewers.  The first toy in the bottom left is a very cool horizontal toy that I’m going to put in her travel cage.  I like horizontal toys for the travel cage because they can be attached at both ends, and therefore don’t pose any risk because they don’t swing and can’t accidentally knock her off a perch or something on a bumpy ride.  This toy combines some great woods like apple, alder, dogwood, and possibly others, along with hard wood, vine balls, and pod cups.  The smaller toy in the upper middle of the photograph is an all-leather toy on a ocotillo base.  Lola is obsessed with chewing and snapping leather cords right now, so I think this toy will satisfy her quite a bit!

close-up of the coconut toy

Finally, there’s one more very cool toy on a coconut base strung on seagrass.  It combines different types of natural woods along with hardwood, coconut husk, and these neat pod things that Lola has never tried before.

Yay!!  Toy reserves have been replenished and I’m sure the budgies and Lola will be quite pleased to know it.  The budgies are extra lucky this month though and have a few other very exciting and big treasure troves of new toys coming their way as well.  Can’t wait for those to arrive soon!

Lola catching some rays outside

Having read a few interesting studies about weaker bones and lower bone density of parrots who live in colder climates due to a lack of sunlight exposure, I am naturally very concerned with getting my parrots enough Vitamin D3.  I’m not a big believer in the ability of synthetic sources to provide adequate amounts of or even adequate quality Vitamin D3 (and all sources of Vitamin D3 in all of the current pellets on the market that I’ve seen are indeed synthetic supplements), so my only options are limited to a few natural food sources (egg yolks, for example, are one source) and natural sunlight.  (I am also not a big believer in full spectrum lighting having the ability to provide Vitamin D3 — I believe it is necessary, yes, but for completely different reasons.)  But most research shows that by far, natural sunlight is the very best source and most efficient source of Vitamin D3, so I prize any time I can get my parrots outside under the sun.  Lola and Sabrina actually adore it.  Charles couldn’t care less, but I drag him outside for his own good anyway.

On a related note, another great food source for Vitamin D3 is fatty fish, like salmon.  (Actually, it’s an exceedingly far richer source of it than egg yolks.)  As a vegetarian, salmon really never enters my household, but I was recently chatting with a very trusted parrot food expert and fellow bird owner and decided to purchase some sustainably wild caught salmon to bake or grill for my flock.  I think it will be an odd experience for me to be handling and cooking it, but the health of my birds is worth it.  I can’t count on mild winters every year, so I’d like to make sure that I have ways of getting them their vitamins through natural sources year round.

Lola finally checking out the bridge swing!

checking it out from all different angles

In other news, Lola has finally decided to stop completely ignoring the painstaking creation that my hands bled to beget!  (The budgies are still pretending it doesn’t exist.)  She humored me by playing on it for a good twenty minutes yesterday.  I felt relieved and vindicated.  I think she actually kind of liked it!

close-up of the foraging blocks

These photos are for Ming, who asked for close-ups of the foraging blocks.  There are two styles, weird trapezoids and triangles, and they have either a side foraging hole or a top foraging hole.  They’re made of white pine wood.  Hope this is what you were looking for!

Lola and the bridge swing base

Well, it’s finally turned into that something amazing!  And I think that this has to be my greatest DIY project yet.  I’m really happy with the finished result.  All in all, it didn’t even take that long.  Putting the whole thing together took approximately two and a half hours in total, which was much less than I’d anticipated.  Working with the sisal rope, however, wasn’t exactly fun: my hands were literally bleeding by the end of it.  But hey, what we wouldn’t do to make our birds happy, right?

As I wrote in the previous post, this swing was inspired by the absolutely beautiful triangle, square, and bridge swings by Les Jouets Rosie, who make the most creative and gorgeous swings on the market.  All credit for design and idea goes to them; they are the original creators of these beautiful swings.  Mine is not even close to as aesthetically pleasing, but I’m proud to be able to say it was wrought by my own hands.  Their swings are so carefully made and so time-consuming that the company hasn’t been selling them for the past several months (maybe even year?) now, and I couldn’t get my hands on one anyway.  So I decided to attempt it myself, especially because there were a few things that I wanted to change about the swing anyway.  I have a strange aversion to dowels and absolutely hate them, so that was the first thing I wanted to get rid of.  To go along with the natural wood base, I also wanted it to be made entirely of natural wood toy parts.  Sure, I sacrificed a lot of the pretty factor, but I’m okay with the result.

step one: making the base more interesting

The very first step was to work with the base.  I added sisal rope in between the “rungs” of the bridge, along with some barky willow wood chunks, in order to provide some more enrichment at the ground level.  These strings also make the bridge a lot easier for my little budgies to navigate, since the rungs and each section are a bit too large for the budgies’ little feet.  I’ve left the center section empty for now, but I might add some strings to it later as well depending on how the birds take to them.

close-up of the sisal ropes

I even took the time to teach myself how to make these very fancy Flemish knots to make the swing more decorative and beautiful!

two strings packed with parts: half-way done!

Here’s the swing at the half-way point.  Step two was to start building up the supporting rope (or the suspension) of the bridge.  I decided on a combination of hardwood honeycomb beads, pine wood foraging blocks, cottonwood, willow, and birch coins, fragrant pine wood pieces, and elm and yucca wood sticks, all strung together on the sisal.

the finished product!

from another angle

And there it is!  I hung it up where the Roller Coaster swing used to be and attached the highway from the Crawler to the bridge.  I’ll probably hang a toy in the center eventually but I want to see how they navigate it first as is.  I’m pretty excited!  It combines a lot of irresistible chews with four foraging blocks as well.  I haven’t gotten a chance to let Lola or the budgies explore yet, but I’ll take some more photos when they do.  Yay!  I think I can safely say that this is my best project ever!

the entire cage

There’s the entire view, which I think looks pretty good!  They both have a lot of different types of perches, swings, toys, and surfaces on their respective sides.  We’ll take a closer look now, starting with Sabrina’s side.

Sabrina's side

the top level of Sabrina's side

Here it is, except the bamboo safety pedicure perch right in front on the door is no longer there; I removed it and replaced it with a manu mineral perch.  (Photos of that are below).  On the top you see that there is her tire-style sleepy swing, of course, a boing, and a single ring swing, all from Grey Feather Toys.  Since they are most likely to roost at the top parts of the cage, I like to make sure that these perches are extra comfy.  She also has one of those great foraging toys and a nice noisy bell toy as well that she loves to ring while playing and swinging on her boing.

the middle level of Sabrina's side

Below the upper level, she has a pine wood platform perch, a cajeput perch, and a beautiful, curvy grapevine wood perch from Exotic Wood Dreams.  There’s a stainless steel water bowl and a food bowl that isn’t visible, along with toys made of shreddables, beads, fleece, and more.

the lower level of Sabrina's side

Down below, Sabrina has a purple safety pedicure perch, two beautiful sandblasted manzanita wood perches from Things for Wings, and another curvy grapevine wood perch as well that is in the door so it’s not visible in this view.  She has one more food or water bowl, and some great toys as well, including soft preening cotton, noisy toys, and beakable beads.

Charles's side

the top level of Charles's side

Here’s Charles’s side!  Up top he has his matching tire-style sleepy swing and boing, and then a supreme cotton rope fluffy swing that he can preen from Big Beaks Bird Toys.  He has some adorable toys too, including a fleece puff, a leather horse, a bunny with seagrass and beads, and a foraging block too.  Just below there you can see the multi-branch dragonwood perch from the Birdsafe Store, which Charles is just obsessed with.

the middle level and part of the front section of Charles's side

Here you can sort of see an absolutely gorgeous grapevine wood perch with a very neat configuration, a manu mineral perch, and a corner dragonwood perch as well.  Up top you’ll also see a pine wood platform perch that is on the “upper level.”  Three food bowls in total on his side as well, along with some great stainless steel toys and a beautiful shredder toy too.

the lower level of Charles's side

This photo actually shows a somewhat better view of the beautiful grapevine wood perch, but it doesn’t quite capture its beauty and its very unique design.  It’s really something.  Down below, there’s a sandblasted manzanita perch and a cajeput perch as well, along with a side-mounted MegaFone from Grey Feather Toys and a lovely shredder toy as well.

changes made to the cage setup

Finally, here are the changes made to the setup: they all happened to be in the front of the cage, on the door.  In this view, you can’t see where the divider falls, but basically right in the middle: so the small ribbonwood perch and the soapbox perch fall on Charles’s side, and the larger flat cajeput platform perch along with the manu mineral perch for Sabrina.  They both like to stand on these respective levels and make longing eyes at each other from across the acrylic divider, silly birds.  (Of course, when I let them play together, it’s instant chaos and aggression.)

the beautiful cage covers

Finally, I absolutely can’t get any flattering photos, unfortunately, but here are the beautiful cage covers!  These photos do not do them any justice at all whatsoever.  They are absolutely gorgeous and made from very heavy, high quality fabric, and are completely lined with a heavy sateen that keeps all the light out.  The seams are hidden and the workmanship is just incredible.  I love that the two fabrics are complementary but they aren’t match-y.  I am so pleased with them!  If you are interested in these beautiful covers please let me know and I will give you the email of the wonderful woman who makes them.  She does not have a site or anything; she is actually a custom curtain and window treatment maker, so she really does quite an excellent job with these.

Pretty little Bri had a delicate little floofy on her beak the other day! It couldn’t have been more picturesque had I placed it there myself. And trust me, she’d never let me anywhere near her face to do that.

I think the second photo much more accurately captures her personality.

In other news, the flock received beautiful brand new cage covers this weekend that are beyond lovely!! I will post photos and details tomorrow because I have to wait until I put them to bed tonight to take pictures. They’re so lovely!!

I do keep an inventory, however, of the perches I have, and lately I’ve been disappointed by how many boring, straight perches there are.  Thus, I’ve always been obsessed with perches, but my latest obsession is non-straight perches.  And it’s always surprising to me how uncommon they are.  Of course, my stainless steel hardware-only rule does already rule out the vast majority of perch suppliers out there, but my curvy-perch-only rule now narrows it down to only a small handful of vendors.  But I have enough straight perches and don’t think I’ll need more for a good, long time.  Curvy it is!

beautiful, curvy perches!

I have managed to pick up a few beautiful perches here and there, but it’s usually one special one at a time.  I really wanted a nice big stockpile of beautiful, varied perches, so I called up the very wonderful Donna from Exotic Wood Dreams.  Donna and her husband make the absolute most beautiful tree stands and hanging gyms I’ve ever seen, and with access to so much lovely wood for all of their gyms, they also make some gorgeous perches.  (Definitely check out their website for some ideas of the kinds of beauties they create, but note that they take phone orders only.  You must call to place an order.)

Although usually I’m the kind of person that wants to see my perches before I buy them, Donna really knows what she’s doing and picks them well.  She asks all the right questions: size, diameter, shape, number of branches, type of bird or birds, and she knows exactly what you have in mind once she’s done.  This time around, however, I actually gave her pretty free reign: I said I wanted a box of ten grapevine wood perches and I gave her a range of sizes, because she already knows my birds.  And when I opened up my box, I couldn’t have been more pleased!

smaller perches for the budgies

There are six beautiful perches of all different sizes for the little ones.  There is a range of single and multi-branched perches with different size spreads, but they are all beautiful.  I absolutely love grapevine wood, and it’s one of my absolute favorite woods for my smaller birds especially.  I love that with grapevine wood, you can have variation all in one perch.  There are so many curves, nooks, and crannies in this wood that the diameter and shape can range so much in a single branch.  Charles and Sabrina love it, too, because they find great little nooks to rub their heads against and break up those itchy pinnies.

larger grapevine wood perches

There were also four bigger, beautiful perches for Lola.  These four perches have nice and chunky branches for her big feet and they have such beautiful curves and variation to them.  The two on the right have thinner branches at the ends that Lola is going to absolutely love chewing up– she’s BIG on gnawing on grapevine wood, and it actually lasts slightly longer than pretty much any other wood under her beak.

I’m very very happy with these perches and I can’t wait to get them into their cages!  I just know they are all going to love them.  Yay for beautiful, varied, and curvy perches!

I won’t go so far as to say they were happy together, but they definitely weren’t angry.  I’m pretty excited, as I recently decided to go ahead and get a new divider with stainless steel bars instead of their current acrylic one.  I won’t install it right away– we’ll probably do trial runs on the weekends to see if they can handle actually being able to get at each other between the bars– but I’m hoping that we can slowly work on rekindling their relationship (or at least getting them to tolerate each other’s presence for more than an hour or two).  The new divider should be here in a week or two.

In other news, I’ve graduated from chopping vegetables daily for my fresh food mixes to chopping vegetables about twice weekly instead, and keeping the extras in the fridge, which seems to be working well.  Today’s vegetable mix contained seven different kinds of leafy greens (regular kale, lacinato kale, watercress, broccolini, parsley, collard greens, and bok choy), fresh ginger, yellow squash, cauliflower, green, red, orange, and yellow sweet peppers, carrots, and possibly some other veggies I’m forgetting.  It was my first time adding fresh ginger to the mix and it smelled divine!!  The mix looks really beautiful and colorful.  I hope Lola likes it.  I’ll be serving it up tomorrow, along with my first attempt at my thawed fruit mix, and of course freshly sprouted seeds and grains.  I hope it doesn’t all become too mushy because of the fruit.  We’ll see how it turns out.

Although Lola absolutely adores Avian Organics bird breads, all of which are fantastic combinations with excellent ingredients lists, the budgies are more picky about their grains: I think they don’t particularly like kamut, for whatever reason, and it’s a staple in all of the Avian Organics bread mixes.  They also don’t care for larger seeds like pumpkin seeds or sunflower seeds, so a lot of the goodies in their mixes go uneaten by the little ones.  So, I set out to create my own bread mix that they’d eat.  I based it loosely on the Good Stuff ingredients list, but also made a few changes, substitutions, and additions that I thought might help to entice my little ones that much more.

my order from Fields of Grain

When I finally decided on an ingredients list of my own, however, I realized that the ingredients were not so easy to find!  I went to several different supermarkets and two health food stores in my neighborhood looking for the different types of flours I’d decided on, and the only one they had was organic spelt flour, much to my surprise.  So I purchased the spelt flour, and had to resort to going online for the rest of them.  It was my first type buying any “grocery” type item online, but I found a great site called Fields of Grain.  Not only did they carry everything I was looking for, but they also specialize in a lot of certified organic products, non-GMO products, and products grown in the USA and Canada only.  Finally, everything was also very affordable, which is always a big plus.

From them I purchased organic corn flour, organic quinoa flour, organic garbanzo bean flour, and organic millet flour.  My order was processed extremely quickly, and they were kind enough to include a free package of organic brown lentils as well!  If you’re ever looking for odd flours or grain products that you can’t find locally, I highly recommend them.

my assortment of five flours

As soon as my flours arrived, I got to work.  I ended up using all four flours as well as the spelt flour.  I’m not a big fan of using corn products, but I know that the budgies really adore it and it’s a big plus in terms of taste for them, so since it was organic and non-GMO, I used just a little to entice them.  They’re also crazy about millet and quinoa, which I feel are healthier grains, so I used those both as well.  Finally, the garbanzo bean and spelt flours were both ingredients in the Good Stuff bread, plus they are healthy additions, so in those went too.

In case you are wondering, this isn’t in recipe form because I don’t really have a recipe.  I pretty much eyeballed everything, and as you will see from the photos below, it was all very un-scientific and random.  Experiment with what your birds like!  I like to think of it as “custom” bird bread.

the rest of the dry ingredients

Next I added the rest of my dry ingredients (all are organic).  Of course it needed some aluminum-free baking powder, and some spices (like cinnamon, mmm!).  I added some of the wonderful dried veggies from the Avian Organics “Cazuela” mix, which includes green peas, carrots, red chili peppers, dandelion, and alfalfa leaf.  I also tossed in some Totally Organics Napoleon Seed mix, a combination of oat groats, millet, flax seeds, sesame seeds, and buckwheat, because I know that they enjoy picking those out.  I may have added extra ground flax, but I can’t remember. I feel like I’m forgetting something, but I can’t tell from the photo…

the wet ingredients added: fresh fruits, fresh veggies, and an egg

As for the wet ingredients, I took a different approach from my usual.  Typically, I chop up a ton of greens and throw them in, but I realized that for the budgies, they really don’t need the greens seeing as how they eat them so readily and so much of them on their own.  (It’s really Lola that’s slightly more reluctant about the healthy stuff, but that’s another story.)  Instead, I really wanted to get a lot more of the Vitamin A-rich fruits and veggies into them that they miss out on because they aren’t huge on eating those, and some fruit as well.  So, I very finely chopped some red, orange, and yellow sweet peppers, some fresh papaya, and even half of a banana, and threw all of those in.  I added some sweet potato baby food (organic and non-fortified with nothing added), and finally, a beautiful, large, farm fresh, organic egg.

mix it all up!

Next I mixed it all up: because I used so many juicy fruits, I didn’t have to add any water, juice, or other liquids.  I like to use wet fruits and veggies because unlike juice, they contain all of the fiber, and a lot more health benefits than, say, water.  When everything was combined I was a bit worried as it looks nothing like what the usual Good Stuff bird bread mix looked like, but I did make some changes, and it actually still smelled like the Good Stuff mix, so I was happy with it.

spread evenly in the pan

I lightly greased the pan with some organic, virgin coconut oil, evenly spread the mix out, and into the oven it went!  I debated adding some hemp seed oil to the mix, but I figured that I could also add it after the fact on top and let it saturate the bread.  I’ve read conflicting opinions on whether or not hemp seed oil loses all or most of its nutritive properties when cooked or heated, so I’ll play it safe and add it after cooking, just in case.

fresh out of the oven

It baked until a skewer pushed into the center came out clean and it looked fully cooked.  It baked into a beautiful, brown with red and orange hues, thanks to the papaya, sweet potato, and peppers.  It smells great, actually, and it’s currently sitting on the counter top, cooling.  Once it has rested and fully cooled, I will cut it up into individual-sized little squares, set aside enough to last 2-3 days, bag the rest, and freeze it.  Every few days I remove a few squares from the freezer and let them defrost in the refrigerator, that way I don’t have to use the microwave and “cook” the bread a second time, unnecessarily nuking more nutrients out of the bread.

I have no idea if the budgies will like it or not, or if it’s close enough to their original favorite recipe for them to be willing even to try it.  I really hope so!  This is, I believe, the first time I’ve made bird bread from scratch rather than from a mix, and I’m pretty proud of my efforts.  Hopefully I will be able to share some photos of them enjoying it.  But if I don’t, you know what that means… back to the drawing board!

The third aspect of my policy is ethics in terms of integrity and business practices.  To be honest, I’m a little bit surprised and disappointed that I even have to write about this topic.  A year or two ago, it probably wouldn’t have gotten its own entry.  But more and more I see unscrupulous business practices happening, and there are many types.

But what is integrity?  It can be defined as a firm adherence to a code of moral or artistic values.  I think that both moral and artistic play a role when it comes to being a bird store owner.  There are things that should be done simply on a moral ground and there are things that should be done out of respect for another’s artistic license and intellectual property.

I’ll begin with the moral side.  A lot of what I discussed in parts one and two, in fact, fall under this moral category.  A store that has a sense of moral integrity is a store that makes a commitment to selling only safe products and selling them in a bird-safe way, minimizing the risk of spreading avian diseases.

Since I’ve already discussed those ideas in full, I will move on to the artistic side of integrity.  One of the most common violations I see lately is in terms of intellectual property and copycat products and toys.  If you read this blog, you know that I (and so many other bird owners) really prize original, unique, and innovative products, especially in a market where so many toy designs are just more of the same.  I love vendors that take pride in their work and dedicate themselves to creating very unique and personal products, inspired by their own flocks, their job or life experiences, or even their own natural surroundings and geographic location.  Thus, it is so disappointing to me when I see vendors deliberately copying each other’s toys.

With a lot of bird toys, there is only so much that you can call your “own,” and I understand that.  Can you really claim that you came up with the idea of stringing certain toy parts on a certain type of rope?  Probably not.  It’s easy to think of several toys from several vendors that all look quite similar.  But I think that there can be very clear violations.  If a vendor has a particular “style” or a particular toy that is extremely unique on the market, and it is something hand made, that’s when it saddens me to see that vendors do not have the integrity not to steal another person’s designs.  So many wonderful vendors are hobby-based toymakers who really pour themselves into making bird toys not for profit, but rather for a genuine love of birds.  And to me, it is easy to tell which vendors these are based on the wonderfully unique and innovative designs they create: there is so much joy and livelihood and personality in each and every single toy.  To steal or to copy another’s unique toy creation is to steal the very joy, livelihood, and personality that is imbued in each design.

Personally, I always choose to support the original creators of each toy design out of respect for their intellectual property and creativity, and out of a sense of integrity.  I hope that others will support creativity and innovation, and choose to do the same as well.