I just wanted to quickly touch base with you all,  I do hope everyone had a fair 2011 year and now it is about to end and I am hoping everyone does well in 2012!

During 2011 I had sold about 3 Pionus pairs and a single Pionus.  I do not have any other breeder pairs other than a Blue Fronted Amazon pair that could still be sold to the right person.  Anyway, I have revamped my aviary a bit and now house 4 of my pet birds in there in an area to let them have ample room.  Being that my doctor time after time had been telling me to get rid of the birds because of my Asthma, I figured at least I can still enjoy them, at least from a far and not be breathing in as much dander and what not compared to if they were still in the house.  I do keep my Blue & Gold Macaw, Kuka in the house except on nice days I let her spend outside.

As for the website, it has not had too many updates of info but I do plan to write up new info or change some areas of the site.  I need to do a lot of maintenance and do away with some pages that do not need to remain intact on the site any longer.  Being that my sales for Blu’s Bird Toy are no longer under this site, I need to also delete out many pages with  images and such. 

Oh, I would also like to add that I have basically shut down my Pionus forum from any new members joining.  Existing members are still able to log in and post so it is still active in that way.  This decision was made due to all the spammers out there that have nothing better to do than spam registrations, I said no more and as usual people ruin it for other people who want to use it.  

So, until next time, you all take care and have a great New Year in 2012!

Our site has remained the same for sometime so eventually during this winter of 2010 I’ll probably start revamping some areas of the site.  I don’t want to chance layout, color schemes or anything like that,  I just want to either add in new info and also need to change a lot of the info on the index page of the site.

In any case, give me an email through the site and let me know what you think!!  Thanks!

 Meet Blu, (on the left) she is a Blue Headed Pionus and is the one who runs the whole show!!  She keeps the company flowing along smoothly and over sees many areas.  Ideally, Blu just sits back and lets me do all the dirty work!!

Back in 2002,  we started out in a small room but suddenly outgrew that space.  At that time we were not called Blu’s Bird Toys.  It was actually 2003 that I took out our DBA “Pionus Parrot”  and wanted to do everything on the up and up legally… so here we are in late Oct. of 2010 still going at it!! 

Times have been tough and a bit slow as it has for everyone out there.  I noticed too that the bird toy market is even getting a bit flooded or almost saturated with many new online stores.  When I started out in 2002 I tried to sell on eBay and there was  not really that many bird toy related things there on eBay, like a whole 400 and some auctions… now today if you type in keyword “bird toys” you will get 16,000 listings there! Whoa!  Because of the saturation of bird toys and parts, it is highly likely to do nothing but rack up eBay fees because most auctions do not sell even with a relisting on the item.  I simply can not make it doing it that way, perhaps if I would have stuck with it and built a reputation on there, maybe it would have been better.  My thoughts were, why do that when I have my website in which I already pay for.

I’ve built up a nice customer base over the years, a lot of repeat customers too!!  I think for the most part that most customers are happy with our products and service, at least I hope so!!  I am hoping that most people who are shopping on Blu’s Bird Toys find it easy to navigate and find the products they are looking for.  Another great thing I have is the search box because back when I just had HTML pages on the main site,  I did not have that option, so it helps a lot.

We also sell Jolly Balls,  I have them on Blu’s Bird Toy site and took out a separate domain and moved the sales to there, I sell toys for the Jolly Ball and Hardware.  

Another thing was back in 2006 when we moved into our new shop which is not a store front at all, just more like a warehouse industrial buiding, I had sufficient room in it … for a short while.  I’d keep buying and buying more for the toy business but it was getting smaller and smaller and then it started getting unorganized as I did not have the proper shelving and such.  I was doing nothing but moving one box to get to another box and it was getting old really quick.  So one day in 2009 I bought many shelving units and got them all put together but as it was, I had to move out all the stuff to put the shelf units in place.  It was a lot of work.  I finally got it done!! Oh boy, I was so happy now that I was organized. I was so organized that I could not find a lot of my things!!  So I of course just had to learn all over again on where everything was placed, that’s all!!  It was surprising that prior in all my messiness of being unorganized that I knew exactly where everything was at.  Still, in this point in time,  I still run around in search of a certain item!!

By the way, we had also took out an toll free number for Blu’s Bird Toys, I can’t say that it is all that helpful, as most people just rather email me for questions – so I may eventually drop it soon. I do not accept orders over the phone so it is really just for a question and answer sort of service.

So for now, that’s it from here!

My thoughts are to try to sell out all my species except the Coral Bills and sell them last being that I want to try to complete what I’ve been doing with them. My Coral Bill Breeder Program may not be completed due to me just selling all the breeder birds and the only way I will sell the Coral Bills would be to one person who will buy them all and stick to the plan that I have been doing with them in my breeding program.

I simply am not getting any younger and I am finding it harder to keep up with all the things that go hand in hand with the birds, basically it’s myself doing it all and is just so dang hard on me now.  The winter months are harsh on my breathing and I can not tolerate it like I use to. I regret to inform everyone, the summer of 2009 is probably the last year for me producing the babies.  If I still have any birds coming up in spring of 2010 – it will only be Coral Bills should I let anyone breed.

I’ll write more on this later but for now, this is where I am headed, I’ll be selling out.

If you are a breeder, please fill out the form on the Registry page and submit it to our database, we need breeders, otherwise it is not too much of use. For Breeders who use more than one band code, then a form can be submitted for each band code that is used.  Exclude numbers on bands, we only want the initials on your band and the state you reside in. The result on a search allows a person to contact you by email which is a link from the result and the person does not see your email at that time.  Phone numbers are optional when filling out the form. You will find our Registry does not ask or reveal any personal information, unless you include your phone number.

Pet owners or even a breeder who are in search of a leg band code will find it quite simple to use our registry search. Simply place the initials of the leg band code you have as my example below the search text box on the page, if you search my band code JMR CA you will see the result, it will show the band colors I use for that band code. You can just even type one letter to search on any band code but your result will not be defined as well, so the precise band code gives you a better return on your search. If you typed just JMR and there are other JMR’s in the database it is going to return a result of all JMR’s that might be in the databse but to define it more so by typeing the CA along with JMR will define the search much better!

If anyone has a parrot related website and would like to place a link of our Leg Band Registry, I would surely appreciate it and the URL Link would be: http://www.pionusparrot.com/registry.htm

Any questions, please feel free to post or contact me.

 By the way, the young man that I spoke about above who helped me in getting the Registry to reality deserves a link to his site and if you are in search of a GREAT Avian Management Software then this is the software you need… there is even a trial version too! Check his site out too “Birds Evolution Pro“.

Some breeders band chicks and some do not.  I feel it is an important step in raising babies. It helps to identify each individual chick not only while young but for later in life and as we all know birds can be placed from home to home through out their life. No matter what, information along the way is lost and then later on no one seemsto know who produced that bird.

While leg bands can pose a threat should a bird get caught in something and sometimes the band may interfer and perhaps make matters worse than had a band not been present. I’ve kept birds for 21 years now and I have never experienced anything where the leg band caused a hazard to one of my birds. Some of that can be because I make sure I keep things safe as possible to ensure my birds can not get caught up in anything or where the leg band can get hung up on something. Is this a good reason to have the band cut off for safety reasons? Some people tend to think so. What does this do when leg bands are cut off?  The removal of a band does immediately stop the background history of where the bird originated from.  Most birds who live long lives will not always stay with the same owner so like said above, information gets lost along the way or ends up not being accurate.

As a breeder, I strongly believe in leg banding. Every now and then I end up not getting one of my babies banded because I did not realize the chick in the nest was larger than I thought, so it is impossible to to get a closed leg band on a chick that is too big for the band. There is a time where even when going on snug you can still succeed in slipping the band on without injuring the chick.  I’ve had this happen a few times and just barely got the band on.  Usually you have to know by experience as to if whether or not it will go on as sometimes toes are too plump or the ankle portion is too large and if the inner back too is just a bit longer than you’d want it to be, then the band is not going to go on at all.

Some pet owners do not really understand the importance of leaving a band on a bird and I have even heard where a vet will advise to have a band removed from a bird and why they advise this is unbeknown to me other than it poses a threat of getting hung up on something. I relate that to the pet owner not being on top of keeping all areas safe for their bird.

 Leg Baning vs. Microchipping – Microchips are perfectly safe and is a great and is easily inserted by qualified vets but the owner MUST register their microchip with the Microchip company.  For instance there are a few out there and I use “Avid” and I have registered my info because if it is not registered and someone scans the bird with a microchip reader then all it does is tells at what vet office the bird was chipped at. If not registered it does not tell any of the owner’s personal info like like bird’s name, address, phone number, hatch date and what ever else you may have added on it. Also if you should move or the bird change ownership then the bird’s microchip information has to be updated otherwise it reflects the outdated information.

Visually you see a leg band on a bird and a bird with a microchip inserted will not be known unless you take it to a vet that has a reader. I have not had any bad experiences with leg bands or microchips. You can even leave the leg band on while even having your bird chipped.

The issue and concerns that many people have when seeing a log band is how to read the band. I will use my leg band code as an example:

JMR – My initials of my own name. Some breeders will use their aviary name that the initials stand for. Most breeders use 2 or 3 letters as a rule. These letters are read on the height of the band.

Any Number you see on the band will usually indicate the number of the chick produced from a particular breeder pair. A Breeder may use one continued sequence in numbering for all their chicks they produce.

The Year  - The year if on band will be placed sidways like the state is and will be the last two digits of the year that the chick was produced in.  I do not use the year number on my bands because I do not have a large turn around to go through that many bands and would be very wasteful in bands if I put the year on my bands… so that part is a matter of preference. 

CA  - state the bird was produced in and will be placed sideways on the band. This is 2 letters.

Color of Bands –  Band colors come in many colors now. As for myself I use different band colors to help identify from a visual aspect that if I have a baby with a red leg band on then it would be from parents of my one Blue Headed Pionus pair and should I have other babies from other parents that where I use the red band too then I would know that and I would of course have that documented thata red leg band baby could be from one or the other of the two pairs that produce Blue Heads fro me. Some breeders use only one color of band and all birds in their whole aviary get the same color bands and run their numbering sequence in a continious manner. This does in fact seem easier to do but is harder to visually see what parents produced that particular baby.

Leg Bands

My breeding program has moved a bit faster that I originally thought it would, with only starting out with one pair in 2004 and getting a second pair in 2005 I was very thrilled at that point! Then I was able to produce 2 males and 2 females from my first pair while my second pair was just barely of age to produce. I had made a trade of my two young females in 2007 with a straight trade across for two other females that was owned by Bob & Ginny Queen of “Queen’s Pride Aviaries” who happen to be great people and with a nice top notch aviary, they are breeders who are mostly in Pionus and Amazon’s and African Greys.

So in making this trade had sped up my progress and now in 2008 I have a total of 5 pairs. Still to this day my pair #2 has not yet produced but in good time hopefully and the other two pairs will be having nest boxes put in place for the early spring of 2009 and pair #5 is going to be paired shortly if they will get a long well and may or may not be offered a nest box for spring of 2009 even though they are about  of breeding age, at least the female is and the male is a year younger than she is.

My goal in this Coral Bill Breeder Program was to produce new unrelated pairs, produce new babies make more pairs. This would be to help myself on getting new pairs and also to eventually offer unrelated pairs to others who want to have the Coral Bill Pionus for their breeding purposes. My ultimate goal is to make sure that bloodlines stay as pure as possible, like at this time I have a brother and a sister  that I would not dare pair up, they will be paired up with other unrelated Coral Bills. We do not want to be weakening any gene pools as we must be sure to keep all parrot species pure as we can.

I’ll probably have several articles under this category because this type of subject can get lengthy, so I’ll ask new questions concerning this in other topic titles in this category of Parrot Keeping 101.  Please comment back on this Question: After getting your first parrot did you learn after the fact that there was more to keeping a parrot than you thought?