Types of Parrots

African Greys
These are the most intelligent bird species, and among the 10 smartest animals on earth. They tend to become emotionally connected with their owner.

Amazons
Amazons are the “life of the party” and love attention! They like music, singing, and love to eat. They can also be very loud when they want your attention!

Macaws
Macaws are the largest parrots on earth! They are very playful and like wooden toys they can chew up. Macaws enjoy the challenge of scouting for food.

Cockatoos
Cockatoos love to cuddle and make lots of noise. They are great climbers, often using their feet like we use our hands, and are known for their fancy flight patterns.

Conures
Conures are very colorful creatures in both their feathers and their personalities. They are very friendly, clownish, and love to be around humans.

Eclectus
Eclectus are known for their stunning appearance, like they are covered in fine fur. These birds have beautiful colors, talking habits, and a lovable charm!

Cockatiels
These birds are well-known for whistling serenades to their reflection, favorite object, or favorite person. They are friendly, funny, and love to cuddle!

Senegals
Senegals are calm, quiet, and make for great pets. They are highly trainable and make for great pets since they tend to form a strong bond with their owners.

Bringing Your
New Bird Home
What to expect when you go home with your new bird.
Bringing Your New Bird Home
When a bird is brought into a new environment, there is stress on the bird. Their new home is unfamiliar! It doesn’t know who its owners, their new “flock,” are. It needs time to adjust and feel safe. During the first few days, it’s best to let the bird acclimate. At a distance, continue to introduce yourself to the bird.
Offer treats to your bird and don’t make sudden motions around it.
Make sure that there are two water supplies and food sources – one set on the cage, and one on the bottom. Have a mix of both seed and pellets to make sure the bird recognizes its food, in case it was accustomed to one or the other previously. Observe your bird and watch which one it eats. Your bird may not eat for the first day, but it should be drinking. By day two, your bird should begin eating.
Some key points of advice:
- Do not let your bird roam free out of its cage for the first few days.
- Do not let your bird settle into a high place, like the top of its cage, where it can assume an “alpha” role.
- When handling your bird for the first few weeks, make sure everyone takes a turn so it doesn’t start to prefer one person over another.
- Never allow cage aggression – you are the boss.
Learn to read signals from your bird. Start with short interactions, allowing it out of its cage. Slowly lengthen the time your bird spends with its family. Eventually, it will want to come out and be part of your family to interact with you and the rest of its “flock.”

How to Choose
the Right Bird Seed
With so many options, we’ll help you select the best for your pet.
Choosing the Perfect Bird Seed
Sprouts & Bugs are the Litmus Test of Seeds
There are three types of bird seed:
- Raw Seed
- Pasteurized Seed
- Processed Seed
Raw is typically regarded as the best, but it can have mold and bacteria. This is from harvest to the bag. In the wild, birds are exposed to raw seed all the time. Raw seed also contains the most nutrients of all seed. If the facility is clean, mold shouldn’t be prevalent in their food. Bacteria should be tolerable and equal to exposure a wild bird would normally receive.
Pasteurized seed has been heated to around 160° Fahrenheit, which kills bacteria. Over-pasteurization, however, has also been shown to convert healthy fats into unhealthy trans fats.
Processing is over-pasteurization. It kills a lot of seed and most insect larvae. This is the best solution for larger food companies, because spoilage will cut into their profits, but it may not be the best choice for your bird. Knowing how your food was prepared for packaging may deter you from the center shelf, brightly colored bags of food with pictures of happy parrots.
You want the best food, not the best bag.
A good bag of seed will sprout, and it will have little Indian Meal Moths hatching from it at room temperature at week 7-8 of their eggs being laid. All seed can have bugs – this is not a sign of bad seed. If bugs are thriving in it, then the seed is still viable. You just don’t want to have hundreds of moths flying around your seed storage areas.
To keep this type of seed fresh, you should freeze it. I personally freeze ALL my foods!
Although, standard pasteurization is not necessarily bad, my personal preference is for raw seed, especially when feeding to our breeders currently nursing their chicks. For day-to-day seed, I use a mildly pasteurized seed that maintains its viability. Simply stated, they sprout.

Why do Parrots
Cost So Much?
Quality should always come first when selecting a new bird.
Why do Parrots Cost So Much?
It’s not as simple as putting two birds in a cage and waiting for money to drop into their poop pans!
This is a story from a responsible breeder’s perspective – I don’t cut corners.
Let’s take 3 pairs of birds. The upfront cost of 6-birds at today’s market prices. They must be fed, housed in a facility, heated, cooled, cleaned, and lighted for up to 5-years before they mature. It may be another 1-3 years before they produce a successful clutch. I have them vet-checked twice a year, and a staff of employees cleaning and maintaining them alongside me.
For those 3 hypothetical pairs, usually one is a good breeding pair, one is sporadic, and the third never breeds. These pairs can produce a few clutches and then take a break for a few years. It’s up to them.
Then you have the issues of parents not feeding their chicks, breaking eggs, or sitting on pine nuts, thinking that’s their eggs. After a few weeks, you go into their nesting box to pull what you think were clear, unfertilized eggs, and it’s a handful of round, warm, egg-shaped nuts.
Quick Fact: Birds love pine nuts as treats, but they’re $5 a pound. Also, a large percentage of the nut is a hull, so if you remove the hull and weigh the pine “nut” itself, it’s more like $25 a pound!
A single pair of birds fed on my diet can easily eat $1000 – $1500 in food a year. A lot of food is wasted because birds will toss it around. I have tried many different attempts to prevent this, but the birds always outsmart me.
A proper diet is crucial, and you cannot buy the cheapest product on the market. It must be a balanced mix to compensate for the stress of laying eggs and producing healthy offspring.
At around week 2·3 the babies are pulled and hand-fed every several hours in brooders set to 98-100 degrees. Through trial and error, you figure out which is the best hand feeding formula; which of course tends to be the most expensive one.
Their breeding cycles are seasonal, unless you modify their environment, to stimulate breeding. This is very tricky, because you must rely on nutrition and intentionally closed-down breeding boxes to make sure the birds are not physically taxed. When their breeding season arrives, you will start to see advertisements from all breeders of the same species.
Their prices are high, for a reason. If you see a bird, that is priced under market value, be cautious.
Why do Parrots cost so much?
Our hypothetical 3·pairs were an upfront cost of $21,000. Feeding them for 5 years is an additional $6000. Utilities, medical, and their fraction of our payment to employees is $12,000.
Without going into other costs, a responsible breeder would have invested almost $40,000 before seeing the first egg from any of these 3·pairs.
Parrots are also becoming scarce. Ever since the import ban of 1992, it has left breeders with dwindling stock and less genetic diversity. Finding strong, healthy birds has become more difficult. As the supply is reduced, the prices creep up. Because less and less birds are breeding, which has been the case since the late 1990s, breeders need to try and at least break even from the birds that are breeding. That one extra baby is what every responsible breeder needs to compensate them for the 80-hour workweeks.

Why are Toys Important?
To keep pet birds mentally happy and stimulated, they require new and different types of toys. This is not just for the bird’s pleasure.
Denying a bird mental stimulation can lead to a variety of unhealthy and undesirable behavioral issues. These issues often include plucking out their own feathers, screaming, and biting.
Many of the best toys are “puzzle” toys. Food can be placed inside a puzzle toy where the bird cannot easily reach it, so it must figure out a way to get the treat out of the toy. These types of toys are ideal for people who cannot be home with their birds all day because of work or other responsibilities.
They will keep the bird entertained with its favorite food or treats. Your pet can be entertained for hours until your return!
Emergency Supplies
You should also always protect both your health as well as the bird’s health by wearing gloves anytime you are dealing with bodily fluids of any type. So, be sure to keep extra pairs of gloves in your emergency bird care kit as well.
Bandages
- Gauze
- Nonstick Pads
- First Aid Tape
- Bandage Rolls
- Wooden sticks
- Cotton Swabs
- Stockinette
Heating & Healing Agents
- Heating Pad
- Heating Lamp
- Hot Pack
- Hot Water Bottle
- Kwik Stop Styptic Powder
Rehydration Tools
- Feeding Tubes
- Avian Rehydration/Feeding Solution
- Syringes of Various Sizes
- Eye Dropper
Transportation Supplies
- Bird Towel
- Bird Net
- Gram Scale
- Travel Carrier
Our Primary Veterinarian
We make every attempt to supply our customers with a healthy, happy bird. We disease test all our breeders for the most common viral and bacterial diseases. We have local avian veterinarians that see our birds when the need arises. We also strongly recommend all new bird owners to establish a relationship with a bird vet in their area, for routine examinations, grooming, and to attend to any medical issues.

Scott E. McDonald, DVM
Avian Mobile Veterinary Office
We have used Dr McDonald on several occasions to evaluate our breeder birds. His website is listed below. He has some bird related articles that you might find interesting and educational.

NorthStar VETS | Andrea Winkel-Blair, DVM, MPH
Avian & Exotics Veterinary Emergency, Trauma, and Specialty Center.
Central Jersey Location
315 Robbinsville – Allentown Rd.
Robbinsville, NJ 08691
Hospital: (609) 259-8300
Fax: (609) 259-8484
Email: awinkelblair@northstarvets.com