Feather to Feather Online

It seems that no matter what a person does, be it right or wrong it will most certainly make someone mad who really has no interest or say in what you are doing. Just last week some female person and her friend up in New York, who I have never met or talked to,  decided that her way is the ONLY way to run Sanctaury and that our way is wrong. I told her basically what I tell others, when you donate or buy food for my Parrots then you may have the right to complain about the way I do things. She found us on FaceBook and just started in until I blocked her. Jeez !! I mean lets get real here, just who buys all of the food for those unwanted Parrots out there and in Sanctuaries ? Not the previous owners or the person who bred the parents of that bird in question. The bulk of it falls on the shoulders of the person or persons who create the Sanctuary and takes in the unwanted parrots. Is it cheap ? NO WAY. Is there really money to be made breeding birds ? NO WAY.    The licenses alone can cost big bucks. And that 501(c)(3) is not cheap. I dont get paid, Bruce doesnt get paid but it seems like everyone else does.

So here we are, we have rescued a few birds that were mistreated, we even have some small birds that most sanctuaries wont take in, and now we have to give them food, shelter, vet care, daily attention, toys and more. Lets see, thats free right ? No, I have to pay for all of this stuff ? "Well you pay for it I dont want to, I want a free hand tame bird with a cage". lol I have heard that more than once, its like people actually think that taking care of parrots is cost free.  Sorry, they arent free, most of the time we dont even break even.

What can I do to get the money to feed the unwanted parrots that I have in my care ? Beg for some of it, buy what I can at wholesale prices which includes paying taxes on what is bought, clip wings and nails, parrot sit or board, hold classes in Parrot ownership and sell a few chicks now and then. OOOO I said a bad word....chicks. Anyone who buys one of our chicks MUST take our species specific Parrot classes. I will teach them how to correctly care for one of my birds so that they will not wind up in a shelter like mine.

On another note: When we were breeding all of our cockatiels for all those years and years, and when we first started raising big birds we used 4 cheap things, a styrofoam incubator where we eventually bought a fan for, a 10 gallon fish tank, some lights and a heating pad. It took a while to learn what had to be where to get live healthy chicks. Now we have a nice expensive incubabator that does EVERYTHING, except work right, which had to be shipped to Oregon last week due to its humidifier stopped working. $ 65.00 to ship that sucker. Man I swear you could have knocked me down with a feather. $ 65.00 one way. And as you all know it wasnt empty when it broke, THAT NEVER FAILS. lol So here we are back to the old standby, that I refused to toss last year and hand turning eggs every couple of hours. lol What was old is new again. lol We did a loose a couple eggs and then there is the strange one. It had 1 red vein and when we transfered it to the old stand by it didnt have that but you never know. Now today it is alive again with veins and a chick. How ??

What else is new. ? Poco. Poco is a Goffin about 4 years old. He is naked in front and doesnt really talk although he enjoys eating eyeglasses. He is  a little stinker but he is funny.

Oh, we are jointly holding a Celebration for our Elders at a Mothers Day Pow Wow in Dade city Florida. Its at the park on Saturday. If you are near stop in and look for my Red Hair Feather.

Our application for our not for profit IRS 501(c)(3) is PENDING. I have just been to busy to write about it. lol I have been knee deep in paperwork. Jeez. Paperwork for this State office, then that state office, renew this and renew that. To DARN much paperwork. We had to have more signs made and the guys did a really nice job. Our Banner and new business cards are next. In the mean time I have another form for Dept of Ag and redo my Florida tax from where we became incorporated. We are now Feather to Feather,Inc. Is that cool or what ?

There is a local bird group that meets monthly that I have been wanting to get to but darn if i dont forget about it until its to late, like the next day. If you belong to that group in Hernando County will someone PLEASE send me a notice next month.

Ok, I'm out of here I am tired. Until the next time.

As you all might have noticed I havent been keeping up with the website the past few months, it has been busy busy here. Bruce has been very ill with Congestive Heart Failure and a lung problem brought on by his heart so its running to this Doctor then back to that Doctor and my health has been argueing back from all of the running around. We had  Bruce to a teaching hospital here in Florida but we have not heard back from them yet.

We did actually make it to 2 Pow Wows and 1 Reinactment, all in 1 weekend it felt like. lol Actually 1 Pow Wow on Saturday and the reinactment on the next day, it wore the both of us out but it sure was fun. We saw the show 'where East meets West'  which was presented by the gguys at www.gonativenow.com. It was to cool. It was imformative and funny. If regret that we didnt know when it started so we missed a large part of it. If you get the chance to check them out I'd tell you to go for it and bring your funny bone.

Birds.....We had a problem with our last Scarlet chick and straggle legs. As soon as we noticed what was going on we took her to the Avain vet and explained to her that this was the largest egg that Sky Walker had ever laid and how we were wrapping her legs but it wasnt working. The vet told us that she was growing to fast and that was part of the problem and to get her on a perch as soon as we could. We put her in a small cage next to Fancy Dancer who decided that her sister didnt need all of her toes. Poor Apache lost half of 1 toe and the nail on another. We moved her away from Fancy and put her in a cage with cockatiel wiring, that was the biggest help to her that we could think of. She had to learn to stand and to walk........weeks later she stands nicely and can walk about a foot or so. She still wont perch but everyday we work on that and walking further. The 1 thing I keep stressing to Bruce is dont let her fall and scare herself, she doesnt need to be afraid, it would only slow her down.

Well its back to the paperwork everyone. Later

Have some fun for me. haha

I have been banding all of my babies with closed bands however I WILL NOT band ANY parrot with an open band. Years ago we used the open bands on older chicks or new adults that we bought, until one of my favorite cockatiels almost lost a foot. Her open band somehow got tangles in one of the bars of the cage and she couldnt move, she protested LOUDLY. haha not that I could blame her any. I am just glad that we were both home and knew how to calm her enough for one of us to open the band and release her leg. Poor thing. Since that day we refuse to use any form of open bands EXCEPT for the import bands on the older imports. Another thing that I find myself wondering when it comes to bands is why in the world do some people cut them off IF they arent bothering the birds ?? I can see it if the band gets to tight or causes a problem with the leg that it is on however 'just because' I dont understand. Say we have 4 Umbrella Cockatoos all about the same size and feathering and they are all in such a bad mood that we have to grab and shove them into their cages to stop the fight, under those circumstances bands make that job a lot easier. Grab the guilty party glance at the band number and put the right pair together and not 2 males who still want to kick butt. lol I have seen that happen. Right now its funny, back then it was HOLY CRAP WHAT DID WE JUST DO ???? They were Lutino Cockatiels and they looked almost identical...red eyes and all. What a LOUD mess. I still dont know what they were fighting about, because they were both males I sometimes think. lol Had to be a guy thing.

When I started this blog it was so that I could help someone identify one of my chicks using the band ID of F2F and as of 2010 they will all be red in color whenever possible, but I kind of got side tracked didnt I ? It has been a VERY long month which I really prefer not to relive. Bruce got very ill and spent 2 weeks in ICU and I had to pick up the slack which included feeding and watering 2 birds who would rather that I lived on another planet. I have to laugh at Smokey and Oscar tho. Smokey ( a 3 rescued footless Congo Grey ) will sit on my hip in bed to watch TV late in the evening but I had best not move ot try to pet him or its where his beak puts pain in my fingers or what ever part of my skin is closes to him. Hows that for a strange duck ? Now Oscar is a rescued 20 year old male Severe Macaw who hates women. As soon as he puts his little eyes on me he pins them and starts screaming bloody murder. lol Its cute now that I know that its isnt just me but ALL human females. Just today I gave him a grape which he took and dropped in the blink of an eye to try to nail me with his beak. haha I was quicker than he was today. haha I glanced back a few minetes later and there he was munching on his grape. Goofy birds. If I get a chance I will write more tomarrow about Bruce and his weird heart. Till them dont let the Parrots Bite and not to much candy for them either.

Well here we are trying to do what WE think is right and someone who ought to be arrested for impersonating a human being jumped in with her two cents, LOUDLY. She verbally abused us because we allow a couple of pairs of birds to breed. Man o man. According to her NOTHING should ever be bred. Well if she really wants to help the worlds Parrots from being bred and the differant Sanctuarys she would put her money where her mouth is. I really dont remember her offering to adopt or feed any of our birds, just her mouthing off about what SHE thinks is the ONLY way to do things.  Yeah, right. lol  I've never been suttle about what I have been told to do or else.  I'll usually take or else. She didnt even read the whole baby page, the part that says that we may or may not have any of the birds listed at any given time and although we dont force breeding we do allow a couple to breed. She said that there are ways to stop them from breeding. True, I can leave them in differant rooms where they can hear each other and scream for their mates.  I have seen first hand that a pair of bars wont stop a determined pair....like our Scarlets. They mated threw the bars that divided their cage in half. Their chicks names were TC and Liberty.  Anyway when she pays my parrot food or vet bills then she can complain. lol

On the plus side...we are on Face Book and we have 3 Scarlet chicks under 2 weeks old. We also have 6 white face cockatiels and the Sun Conures caught us off guard and are on eggs. We kept wondering if they were a true pair or a couple of females. lol Now we know. haha

I just spent 30 minetes typing and I hit Publish and what should have been a wal lah turned into a What the heck. No connection. Ok, connect, refresh. OH MAN its gone. Right into cyber space. I shall try again later.

Well here we are again, I've got to sign uo for Twitter one of these days.

We lost a whole bunch of chicks recently DIS ( dead in shell ) which totally sucks. With the Sun Conures and the cockatiels we think it was a low humidity, Bruce's oxygen concentrator just sucks the moisture right out of the house and I didnt notice it. DUH, I should have but........  We were able to hatch 4 cockatiel eggs out of the incubator with success which kind of told us what the problem was, so those 4 chicks are being hand fed right now and another pair had 2 hatch out after we started spraying the boxes. 

Now the Umbrella Cockatoo is a whole differant story. That BIG chick was also DIS however he was a first one for me to have this problem with, he was turned around in his shell. Weird. You see when a chick is ready to begin the hatching process his head should be in the fat end of the egg, the air sack end, where he can move his head back and forth and turn his body slowely around the egg cracking it as he goes. This little guy was malpositioned his head was in the small end of the egg and he could not move. He was alive and peeping one day and dead the next. By the time I figured out what the problem was it was to late to do anything about it, I couldnt free him. It is a tight time line between being to soon which kills the chick and being to late which kills the chick. Still its is very disheartning to lose a chick whether it be DIS or hours old.

Today SkyWalker laid her first egg this year, I have NO IDEA what she was waiting for, lol, but she was waiting for something. The moon in a certain postion for all I could figure out. haha

We have a few new members, to which I will say Osiyo to.

We have a Gentleman who is a Native American Flute maker and we have another Gentleman who is a Celtic craftsman. He makes all types of interesting things including fish hooks. I have asked them both to post their wares on our site so that our members can see and purchase things from them. Neither of them have yet but I sure hope that they do.

Look for us on FaceBook under the FeathertoFeather name.

Well here we sit on Mothers Day 2010 and I ask myself " Does having 2 brand new chicks count  ?" We have 2 brand new baby cockatiels that hatched this weekend. They are so tiny compared to these BIG birds, even as babies.

We went to a Mothers Day Pow Wow on Saturday in Dade City Florida ( like I could stray much farther than that this weekend with chicks hatching ). Man did I get a sunburn. Between no shade and my medication I fried. I will post some  photos when I get a chance.

Later.

The paperwork went out yesterday for the change over from a single owner ( self proprietory ) business into a corporation. When the State finishes up their part of the paperwork Feather to Feather will be Feather to Feather,Inc. Is that cool or what. The next part is finishing up the IRS paperwork and mailing it in as soon as the Corporation paperwork comes back.

I've been a little slow on this but it hasnt been easy getting all of the money to do it on top of feeding the birds. Who ever says that rescued pets should be rehomed free has never had to feed them or pay for the medical costs just to get and keep them while looking for a new owner. It isnt cheap.  And then people want a Healthy, Hand Tamed, fully feathered parrot with NO issues. Yeah, right. For instance we have been trying to find a home for an African Ring Neck, Tiki, for about 8 months now. She is fairly quiet, semi tame, in good health, vet checked parrot. They go for about $ 100.00 to $ 150.00 in most areas. I am asking $ 50.00 from a reduced price of $ 75.00 for her without her cage or $ 100.00 with the matching cage and stand. And well guess what we still have her, noone has even come to see her. Poor girl. I had a $ 35.00 offer for her and the cage to a woman who " I dont believe in breeding animals but for that price I will buy a baby". PASS.  I told her to go buy the baby. I mean, just how do you think that baby got to be a baby ?  Someone bred the parents. $35.00 doesnt even cover half the vet visit, let alone the tests run.

On another note: The Seven Feathers Intertribal Lodge website is up. It isnt done but its up. Anyone wanting to become a member of the elodge should go to www.SevenFeathersIntertribalLodge.webs.com and check it out. We need members and those to contribute to the page in the form of messages, photos, poems, short stories or fables and taking part in a discussion.

It has been awhile since I have posted and the title above gives you a clue as to why. Bruce had been having some breathing problems of late and we were trying to figure out the cause and keep a low profile while he recovered, when it got worse. On October 22, 2009 we rushed him to the Emergancy Room with chest pains and breathing problems worsening. The short version is he has Congestive Heart Failure, plus they found something in his Lungs. Not good.  Bruce was born with a weird heart anyway, Incorrect Transposition of the Great Vessel. Basically it means his heart is upside down and has 2 valves instead of  the usual 4. For the last month we have been trying to get things around financially and making other things workable. Doctor visits here and there, appling for Disability, getting used to the Oxygen and its own set of problems.  They say that his working for a living the usual way is over. I can see that as noone wants you to work for them while wearing Oxygen, its to dangerious.

We will NOT  be taking in any further Parrots or letting Parrots breed at this time except for 2 pair who we cannot stop anyway and the cockatiels. haha When things return to some sort of normal ( as if ) we will return to business as usual. 

On the plus side of things we are a lot closer to the money needed to apply for our 501 c 3. I have to get busy and incorporate now and get the ball rolling. Someone volunteered to help but when the computer crashed a few weeks back I lost her email address. Such is life.

We are going to add a new page for Adoptable Adult birds real soon, the next few days I hope. Its funny how around my area if it isnt BIG and Hand Tame how NOONE wants one....even for a very low cost or Free one. I tried to find a home a few weeks ago for a FREE cockatiel who was tame but just a plain ole normal grey male and NOONE wanted him. But yet I get dozens of emails wanting a free BIG TAME PARROT.  I just laugh and tell them almost noone gives away a FREE HEALTHY HAND TAME Parrot, I get the ones that noone else wants. The Semi tame or the bald birds with attitudes.

I shall return and do further work soon.

Thanks everyone and Happy Holidays.