- Hey guys, Jamie-Lee here from Bird Tricks,
and today's video is about why parrots make awful presents,
whether you're a kid or an adult,
and sometimes I categorize adults in the kids section,
as well as just kind of dismantling some assumptions made
about why I got my budgie Blueberry, and a few other things.
(bright music)
So first things first,
almost everybody here on the channel assumes
that I got budgie Blueberry for my daughter, Capri,
which is actually not true.
I was getting my hair done by a girlfriend
that I went to school with and she told me
that she was going to go get her and her husband a parakeet.
And I said, hold up before you do that,
could I please go get this parakeet for you,
tame and train it, and then give it to you guys?
I've always wanted to film a budgie course.
We really wanted to update our old budgie course
that was from about, ooh, 13 years ago or so,
and I just wanted the opportunity to do it
without adding another bird to my flock.
And so she jumped on board.
She was like, hey, free training?
I'm all about it.
So I was really excited.
We set the dates, we set up our studio,
and we knew we were going to film this budgie course
from day one, because unfortunately,
budgies have been deemed as starter birds,
and perfect kids companions, and all these other things
that I really don't agree with,
and it's mostly because of their price point
and their easy availability.
So I wanted to kind of walk people through day one
with a brand new budgie and simulate
the impulse buy that most families go through
of walking through a pet store,
having their kid get super attached
to seeing a cute little bird through the glass, wanting it,
the parents looking down and realizing
it's only around 20 bucks, why not?
Then getting it home and realizing it's not tame,
it's entirely wild, it wants nothing to do with them,
and they have no idea what they're doing
because they impulse bought, so they did no research.
Therefore, they had to buy everything from the pet store,
which usually sets them up for failure from day one.
So I wanted to go over all of this
and how to do it right from day one,
and how to fix it if you already did it wrong from day one.
So that was really my overall goal.
Then right before we went to go get Blueberry,
my girlfriend dropped a bomb on me
and said, we got a hamster instead.
It's a no go on the bird, I'm not cut out for it,
we're gonna stick with the hamster, ugh!
Darn, because I had all the content in my head already,
and I really wanted to produce this course,
and my husband and I were super excited about it.
So we just kind of looked at each other and said,
the hell, we're just gonna do it anyway.
It's something that's really needed,
we were getting bombarded with emails,
lots of messages on social.
It just felt like it's too important not to do,
let's do it anyway, even if we end up keeping
and adding to our flock, let's do this,
which was the first question my daughter asked,
are we keeping him,
because she's used to project birds
who are here temporarily.
So she does know that she wants to get mentally prepared
for if this bird has got to leave
or if this bird is gonna stay.
So that was kind of the background story
behind getting a budgie.
We decided to just go ahead and move forward
and still produce the content,
because looking around, the small bird content
is really needed.
And those are the birds that are more easily available
to people and the ones that people really don't care
to educate you about.
Even the people at the pet store that we quizzed about,
there was not a lot of knowledge there,
and the stuff that they have available to you
as far as diet and everything else
really sets you up for longterm failure.
So I wanted to address all the things.
I'm gonna show you guys a little behind the scenes
sneak peek at part of our budgie course that we produced,
going all the way from day one
that kind of goes over our thought process
during this whole thing.
- I think I've thought of a name.
- [Jamie-Lee] What?
- I think I'm gonna go with Blueberry, I'm still not sure,
but I like the name Blueberry,
it's my favorite so far.
(wind blowing)
- Woo!
(Capri squealing)
- [Jamie-Lee] Were you expecting that?
- No. (parents laughing)
I thought you didn't wanna get another bird?
- I don't, but I feel like
a lot of people don't know what they're doing,
and they impulse buy these little parakeets
and I wanna show them how to do it right.
So you might be wondering why do I not recommend birds
for kids as pets?
And it's not so much that birds make bad pets for kids,
it's that kids tend to not make
lifelong great companions for birds,
and the reason why are plentiful.
And when I say kids, I'm talking kid kids.
So if you're just looking for something
to keep your kid busy with or to entertain it,
that's kinda where I'm coming from.
Get them a stuffed animal or an iPad,
and they can pretend to take care of the little animals
in those apps and they starve to death.
But what really tipped me over the edge
on producing this video was an email I received.
When I read it, I just thought, okay,
I've got to do something.
I've got to share my opinion on this.
And I've got to put this information out there
so that people can make educated decisions on this,
and understand that parrots are not presents.
They are not commitments that you make for somebody else.
I love your website.
I've been finding it to be extremely helpful
due to a situation that I'm currently facing.
Last year, my mother bought my little sister a parrot
for her 11th birthday.
The reason being that she was bored of her two dogs
and her hamster.
My mom believed that a more difficult pet
would keep her entertained.
One year later, nearly to the day,
my mom contacted my husband and I
asking if we could please take the bird.
My little sister was bored of her green-cheeked conure
and now wanted another dog,
and my mom couldn't take care of the bird.
She has a two year old, also,
and it was impossible to give him the time that he needed.
My mom was frustrated because my sister would lie
and say she fed him when she didn't,
and he would go a day or two without real food.
He is now stuck on an almost all-seed diet,
cockatiel seeds at that,
'cause he has never been offered much more
except for a treat on occasion.
He hates most everyone, especially my little sister
due to him being almost always cage bound
and never having interaction.
My mom would find him screaming because my little sister
would just put a cloth over his cage to keep him quiet
and would yell at him out of frustration because, well,
she's a child and shouldn't own such an intelligent animal.
I wish there were people out there like you
emphasizing how much you need to know
to take care of a parrot
and how they should never be given as a pet.
All right, So those of you that are kids
wanting to give into your parents to let you get a bird,
or if you're a parrot...
If you're a parrot.
If you're a parent trying to figure out
if your kid is ready to have a bird,
the best advice I can give is get experience,
whether that is through hands-on experience at a rescue,
just devoting your time to hanging out at a rescue,
working with the birds, feeding the birds,
cleaning up after the birds,
seeing what they're capable of,
seeing some of the best case scenarios with rescues.
Some, the owners just passed away
and the bird had nowhere else to go.
Others have been through home, to home, to home
and finally surrendered to a sanctuary
because nobody could give that bird what it needed.
You're gonna see a lot of different cases,
a lot of different stories in rescues and sanctuaries.
Some birds are there to stay,
and the rescue will no longer adopt them out
because they have been given up on so many times.
And some of those birds just need a safe haven,
while others are avidly looking for homes
and could be adopted within the next day,
and nobody just knows about that bird's potential.
So I recommend getting hands-on experience
with an array of species,
and that's best done through rescues.
Now, the other thing is you can pet sit,
just put some ads out or reach out in your local community
and see if anybody has birds that need help with them,
that you'd be willing to offer your help,
or if you'd just be willing to pet sit
so you can gain some hands-on experience that way.
Now, my favorite way of gaining experience is fostering.
Some rescues and sanctuaries work 100%
off of just fostering.
That means a bunch of people are volunteers
and have birds at their homes that they literally foster
until they can place them in forever homes
at which they move out and go to their forever homes.
This is a really, really cool thing
because I find the mentality of people who foster birds
is very open and very relaxed.
They kind of view it as a stepping stone
to the forever home.
And in that case, they kind of relax
into this better head space of a lack of pressure on them
to do all the things and be the perfect home.
So what I've found is that if you look at it
as though you are a stepping stone
and you are helping prepare that bird for its forever home,
maybe that's through better diet and nutrition,
maybe that's through just getting better sleep.
Maybe that's just simply a safe haven and a safe place
that doesn't have other animals or chaos in the home
that you can possibly offer.
Whatever it is that is your super power
that you can offer that bird as a stepping stone,
I think is really, really magical.
And a lot of people, through fostering,
find that they are living harmoniously with that bird,
and it just happens to be the perfect fit,
which is a really, really cool situation.
If you come across that where you're fostering
and you decide, I am that forever home,
this is working great,
but it's also a great way to gain experience
and see what your strengths and what your weaknesses are
based on how you work with these animals.
So how I gained my experience
was somewhat similar to fostering.
It's how I deal with project birds,
and it all started from just seeing clients,
birds that we weren't hired to work with,
kind of in the background,
not being worked with, not really being paid attention to,
and they were kind of birds that had these reputations
that nobody felt like could be undone.
They were almost these labels of permanence,
of he hates men, he's a shoulder referee
who will not come down once he's up there,
he's a biter, he's too scared to fly,
he'll never fly, he's never flown,
he will only eat junk food.
You know, all of those labels
that kind of are set in stone with some people
when they say them,
almost like you're never gonna do anything about it.
You just have to accept it as it is.
And I was at a point where I was like, well,
I'm not going to promise anything, but let me try.
Let me try and change that and see if this bird
is open to changing his ways.
And that's where project birds was really born,
was just from people trusting me to work with their birds,
and I love it.
I feel like that's how I learn,
and I become a better trainer
is because the birds communicate and teach me,
and then I'm able to show that to the world
and hopefully, teach more and more people
how to work with birds in a positive way
that it doesn't have us, you know, like this in the home,
because I want the humans to be happy
and I want the birds to be happy together.
So that's really the goal.
So I really believe in all the experience that you can get.
And however you go about that, do it.
Take the courses, work with people that are open to it,
you know, even volunteer at a shelter,
even if it isn't necessarily birds,
just learning how to train any sort of animal
can be very much so translated to another animal,
especially if you're working with prey species
versus predator species,
a lot of it kind of overlaps.
Hopefully I'm not getting too far off on a tangent
on that one.
Lifespan is first and foremost
of why I don't believe birds make great presents.
A lifespan of a bird, just as a general thing
that I randomly Googled and came up with,
Macaws, they live between 50 and a hundred years.
Cockatoos, 40 to 60 years old.
Amazons, 50 to 70 years.
Grays, 50 to 60.
Eclectus, 65 to 85.
Now obviously, when you get into smaller birds,
their lifespans are shorter.
However, generally with parrots,
they're living a long time and they might even outlive you.
So that means they're in wills,
they're getting passed down from person to person,
you don't necessarily know if the person
that you're passing your bird down to is all in.
It's a hard commitment to want to make.
Reason number two, is within that lifespan
is your own lifespan and your priorities change,
especially when you're a kid,
and you're in certain activities.
I remember when basketball was a huge part of my life.
When I tried to get into softball, but sucked so bad,
it was not a huge part of my life,
but you kinda have to pick and choose what your path is
and what your priorities are.
And as you grow, those change.
It can be school for a while, it can be sports,
it can be your hobbies,
It can be maybe you found out what you wanna do
for the rest of your life and you're already working on it,
like my husband, he started playing with a magic kit
when he was about three or four years old
and took off with it.
That was his number one priority.
There's a lot of people that discover
what they're meant to do on this earth super early on,
and that is their priority.
So making sure that the animal stays as a priority
is pretty hard during those huge growth changes
where friends become the priority,
or boyfriends become the priority,
or whatever it is for you.
But as you guys know, as you grow in life,
your priorities change.
That's just part of life.
So making sure that your lifelong commitment
to your bird doesn't change,
that's a hard thing to commit a child to.
And I don't think that anybody should commit their child
to that kind of lifelong companion.
Although I love, love, love my daughter, of course,
and I feel like she's mature
and relatively responsible for her age, she's seven,
so I can't really even depend on her
to make sure Blueberry has fresh water every single day.
I tried, it was a fail.
It's just not something that she can remember to do.
And getting Blueberry, I knew was a commitment
from me to Blueberry, and my husband,
'cause you gotta chip in.
You know, making sure that if you do get your child a bird,
you know deep down that bird is yours.
It is your commitment as the adult.
I'm assuming I'm talking to an adult right now,
but as the adult, if you decide to get your child a bird,
you have to know that it's your bird first,
and that you have to take 100% responsibility
for that bird because you can't expect that from a child.
So I think the expectations have to be realistic.
As fun as it would be, and as awesome as it would be
to rely on my seven year old
to completely take care of Blueberry, I can't.
She doesn't make the fresh food every single week.
She doesn't do the feeding or the scheduling,
and sometimes things go out of whack,
and I have to help her through.
So having realistic expectations
and not putting unrealistic expectations
on your child for their pets is really, really important.
I touched on this already,
but just the commitment of a parrot,
I don't feel like is a commitment
that you should be making for somebody else.
I think it's the type of serious commitment
that somebody should make for themselves.
That's why I'm so anti getting somebody
a parrot as a present.
It's almost like here's your commitment for life, have fun,
when maybe they didn't have the time
or the research to put into it
to figure out is this really ideal for me,
or am I just going to be another notch
in this bird's array of homes?
One of the things you guys have to remember
is that parrots are the third, most popular pet
in the entire world,
but the number one most rehomed.
So please go look at the sanctuaries
and the rescues around you,
or if you're traveling, try to make an appointment
to go see one to see why.
Hear the stories, why are those birds there?
How old are they?
How long have they been there?
How many homes have they been passed through?
This helps paint a realistic picture
of what most birds go through so that you can avoid
being that in a bird's life.
I would rather convince most people to just back up
and realize, oh, I'm actually not ready to have a bird.
I don't want the responsibility.
I don't want that long term of a pet.
I'm not cut out for it.
My lifestyle is not a good match,
and realize early on before getting into it
that you might not be in the right match for a bird
as much as you do love them and care for them.
There might be something else that you can do to help birds
like make DIY toys and send them,
or make fresh food for a rescue nearby,
or maybe you can bird sit for somebody nearby,
but committing yourself might not be the best plan.
And I appreciate people that are able
to come to that conclusion on their own
before ever stepping foot into it.
Now, on the other hand,
I also appreciate the comments of people
being like, I did it anyway.
I read all the things, I listened to everything,
and I thought, you know what, this is still me.
I'm still choosing this path, and then everything's awesome.
I love both of those.
I just wanna make sure that both are equally successful
in the decision that they make,
and they feel right about that decision.
The other thing I wanna ask you guys
is can you handle a bird on its worst day,
when it's it's messiest, when it's screaming,
when it's biting, when it's not friendly, all the things.
Picture the bad day,
and can you handle a bird on his bad day?
Because if you're just picturing the best of the best
and all the unicorns and rainbows,
that's not what bird ownership is about,
or bird companionship, really.
Being a companion to a bird is messy,
and difficult, and fun, and amazing,
but it has its ups and downs,
and feelings can get hurt because birds do things sometimes
that hurt our feelings.
And you have to learn to work with a bird in a way
that is a little bit different than cats and dogs.
So they're not really comparable.
And I just wanna make sure that you can handle
and it's worth it, even when the bird
is having the worst day ever,
and you can handle the bird on a bad day,
and you aren't just picturing best of the best,
best case scenario.
Picture worst case scenario, and can you handle that?
All right, well, I hope you guys understand
that this video is coming from a good place
and just trying to keep birds out of homes
that haven't done their research,
aren't quite ready, just all the things.
I just don't want another notch in the belt
of a bird having to be in...
You guys are like the 16th home in a line of 30.
That's really what I'm trying to avoid,
is birds getting passed from home, to home, to home,
and the more that we can spread a wealth of knowledge
and information on how to properly work with birds,
the better we can all be together.
I hope this video helps you guys better understand
where I'm coming from and realize
that parrots are not presents.
They don't make good gifts.
They shouldn't be given to people as a surprise,
happy birthday or Merry Christmas.
Here's a bird and a lifetime commitment.
It should be something that...
a commitment that you make for yourself,
and especially if you are a parent
and thinking about getting your kid a bird,
please understand that underlying all of that,
no matter how committed your child is,
you need to be 100% on board with this bird being yours,
should your child's life
go in a totally different direction,
and the bird no longer become a priority.
It needs to be a priority to you.