Education

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.