- Hey everybody, Dave and Jamie Womach here
from BirdTricks with a special update on Sunny.
You guys have had a lot of questions, you've written in,
you've left comments and we kind of just left you hanging.
So we thought we had some explaining to do
and I do want to give a little spoiler alert.
There's actually a really, really happy ending to the story.
But before we get to the happy part of the ending,
we want to explain kind of what happened.
- Yeah, so a lot of you know
how we do things here on YouTube and Patreon.
So Patreon started by really funding
and sponsoring project birds,
which Sunny was a project bird.
So after we gave you guys all the...
I think it was four or five videos here on YouTube,
the rest of the content was going out on Patreon.
So they were getting updates.
We just never made that public
on YouTube or educated together like a full video.
They were getting a lot of behind the scenes.
So do you wanna break the bad news
to this part of the story?
Because what did we left off
with you guys on YouTube for those
of you that do remember is we had just fully impeded Sunny,
which means we gave him brand-new feathers.
Now he came to us from a hoarding situation.
His wings were totally butchered by himself,
so he chopped his wings off.
It was real awful looking and we raised the money
to imp him, so he had brand-new flight feathers.
- So yeah, we got donated feathers from clients
and friends and we took them
to one of the best place,
best animal hospitals to do the imping.
They did a fantastic job.
He had these brand-new wings.
We were super hopeful.
We're getting ready for a flight trip.
And then he looked at his wings, he was like, "Huh,
this is outta place."
And he chewed them all back off as if we had clipped them.
So it really, for me in that moment, I was just devastated
'cause it was like we just gave him this gift
that like gave him his freedom back and he didn't want it.
And so for me the dream of like flight training him was gone
and that was really what I wanted to do with this bird.
And so we thought, okay, no worries.
We'll put him into a trick training course
and then we had more bad news.
- So we had the whole imping process completely sponsored,
which was amazing.
And it was actually not as expensive as we were expecting.
And so with the extra money that we had donated,
we ended up running full blood work and labs
because we had this whole issue getting those
from the original vet that Sunny came from.
And we found out that his liver was in very poor condition,
like no more treats.
Poor condition going on a prescription pellet for fatty,
yeah, fatty liver disease.
He was going on supplements.
It was a lot and it was more than I was comfortable putting
on our caretakers for when we leave.
Normally, I don't have an issue
with my caretakers taking care of project birds,
but there's no sort of medication or prescriptions
or any of these sort of things
where it's like you have to make sure he gets it involved.
And that was pretty overwhelming for us.
It was something I expected early on
that we didn't get the results of until later
when I realized we had never actually run his liver values.
That was a rude awakening because we kind of looked
at ourselves like we wanna do this trick training course.
How do you trick train this bird without using treats?
Where are we at?
We kind of felt like we needed to prioritize his health
before you could just say, "I really wanna train this bird."
Like, so what?
You need to get the bird healthy first.
- Yeah, so unfortunately
that's kind of where his story came to an end
and we hadn't really shared a lot as Jamie explained,
we shared it on Patreon,
but we didn't really share it here on YouTube
until we really had more of the well-rounded data
and all the evidence to be able to say
this is why we ended up coming to this conclusion.
We just really couldn't trick train him
and use any sort of treats
until we got that dietary issue solved.
So we took him back down to the rescue and we said,
"Hey, here's kind of the new thing.
Here's his prescription medication
and pellet that he needs to be on."
And we are very happy because he has recently been adopted
by an awesome family who I know is going to continue on
with all of his medical history, which they're aware of.
They're able to continue that moving forward
and just keep him healthy and happy.
- Yeah, and I think a lot of you had asked, like well,
what if you know, he does the whole prescription thing
and then it looks good again
and then would you guys take him back?
And what we were told or advised to do
from the vet was to check him every six months
and see how his liver values were doing just
from everything.
And we kind of went through some ups and downs with that.
When I first put him on the prescription pellet,
he actually stopped eating his fresh food.
So we went through all of that.
I was working on conditioning him with handling and bathing
and things on the side that I was trying to find reinforcers
for while also working on that.
So I was really grateful to Ronnie's,
it was actually our trip to Africa
that like sparked all of it and I was like, "We're leaving."
This is a big deal.
I'm super uncomfortable leaving him in the care of anyone,
but you guys, could we just bring him back
and have you guys see this through?
And then the fact
that they were able to do an adoption was amazing
'cause we visited him a couple times
and been like, "How's everything going?
How are things looking?"
And they didn't have any data
as far as like veterinary data to give us yet.
So we were just really relieved when we found out
that he's been adopted and they're so happy.
And like, we felt like at least the efforts
that we put in for handling
and just basic stuff transferred to somebody else.
Because I remember when we showed up at the rescue
and they were like, "Whoa!"
- Yeah, they couldn't believe that we could handle him.
And just that he was like nice, you know,
'cause he hadn't really been, you know,
he was one of these birds
that if you had to get him out of the cage you could,
but you need to go get somebody
who doesn't mind being bitten
and that like that's kind of where he came from.
I mean, he was in a pretty bad situation prior
to going to the rescue and then to us.
So I felt really great
to be able to make the steps that we did
and not every story's gonna have the same type of ending,
but I don't know, it was just super cool
to be able to spend that time with him
and get him far enough to
where he could be adopted. - Yeah.
- And so could be happier that he's in good hands.
- He's the type of bird where I felt silly doing the updates
on Patreon sometimes,
but like if you could appreciate where he came from,
then you could appreciate these little videos.
But I was just watching them back today to refresh my memory
on where we had left off with everybody.
And one of my videos was like, "Jerk it out."
I had this breakthrough, like look at my handling with him
and it was literally a video
of me walking out to the aviary, opening it up,
offering my hand.
He steps with his foot here,
I close my thumb on his one foot,
he gives me the other foot,
I close him on my hand, he lets go of the side of the cage.
And I'm like, "Walk him out."
I'm like, "What?
Killing it! Woo!" (Dave laughing)
Like, I was super stoked
because although he was good with you, he wasn't good
with most other people. - Yeah.
- And so I was like,
"I wanna make sure that this translates to everybody."
And so, my videos were like that on Patreon just being like,
"Woo! Woo!"
So excited.
But I think that if you guys can relate to that
and have a bird that's just really difficult
and coming from a situation
where you just have a lot to work on,
then you can relate to those sort of breakthroughs.
Like that was a really big deal.
And I started learning how to use my environment
as the reinforcement for him.
It made me a better trainer
to like get more creative like that.
But ultimately for what we wanted to do,
it wasn't an alignment.
- Yeah, and I think it really highlights too,
whenever you're working with new birds
and it's critical to have that the metrics, the data of like
what is their health actually like?
And so, had we not done that,
we probably would've done more harm
by giving too many treats without knowing
that he actually had a liver issue.
So it's good to have all that input,
so that you can make the right decisions based off
of good education and not just like, "Well,
this is what I want for the bird
'cause that doesn't always align."
- And something interesting
that I found through collecting data
'cause this was something Patreon asked me
'cause they were just like,
"Does he allow the feathers to grow in
and then take them off?
Or does he take them off while they're coming in,
so that you never get to see how pretty they are."
And we were devastated with the imping.
Like, he went to town. - Yeah.
- Like once he started,
he went to town almost and it happened very quickly.
So we were kind of depressed.
- Yeah. - And devastated-
- Yeah, like crushed my soul.
I'm like, here's- - That sale-
- Cool opportunity for this bird.
And just-
- So we were super bummed.
And then he started to grow his new feathers in.
Like, he started to grow his flight feathers in,
which I was like, "Yes, this is super cool."
And I took pictures and I was sharing 'em on Patreon.
I was like, "Check it out.
He has two flight feathers in.
This is looking awesome."
Like, he actually looked pretty where
what do they call it when they have those bird shows
and birds are actually clipped
what they don't look like they're clip-
- It's like a show clip, I think they call it.
- Yeah. Something like that.
So he kind of almost looked like that
with he was getting two nice feathers and I was like, "Yay!"
And then data collecting, he would wait
between five and six days,
and then he would take 'em all out.
- It was so, it was a strangest thing.
- So he let them come in, and you'd think, "Oh my gosh,
he's leaving them alone.
This is looking awesome."
And then he'd take 'em all out.
It was like a massacre.
He would just take them all out
and it was every five to six days.
So it was really interesting
of a pattern where he didn't do it every day.
And one of the things that I really struggled with
is I started trying to train him to play with toys.
'Cause our go-to as trainers
and like I think anybody online will say, "Oh,
we have a plucking bird or a barbering bird.
Get it toys, teach it to play with toys
instead of its feathers.(exhales sharply)
What I noticed was when Sunny came to us,
he didn't really play with a lot of toys.
And as I got him to play and interact with toys,
he would actually start to mess with his feathers more.
Whereas if I didn't work on it and didn't focus on it,
he didn't play with toys,
he didn't mess with it himself as much-
- And now looking back
that could have been related to liver issue.
- It could have. Yes. - Yeah.
- It totally could have.
And so for me, I was just going
through these very highs and lows
and being like, "I know what I'm gonna do.
I don't know what I'm doing.
I know what I should work on.
I shouldn't be working on this.
I've sabotaged everything."
It was really difficult
to navigate that. - Yeah.
- And so I learned a lot.
And I think that's the point with project birds
is that we learn a lot.
Hopefully, you guys feel like you learn a lot,
but we did feel like you deserve an update
and Sunny got his happy ending
and that's really what matters.
And these parrot rescues are doing amazing things.
So we hope that Sunny thrives in his new home.
We hope that his liver makes a recovery
to some extent if it can.
And that they're all living really well
and happily together.
- Happily ever after. - Happily ever after.
(Dave laughing) Yeah.
- So as you heard,
we do all of our project parrots over on Patreon.
So if you'd like to support us,
supporting other project parrots,
so we can save parrots one person at a time.
Check us out over on patreon/birdtricks.
So you can see the other successful journeys we have
with a lot of the other project birds.
(gentle music)