Growing up alongside animals my entire life, I found my passion within birds in 2022. I was drawn in by their completely unique personalities, their attitude, their curious natures, and their endless bounds of intellect. That year, I adopted my first pet bird, a beautiful budgie named Fish.

Our family soon grew larger, when I adopted two baby quaker parrots who were sold to me as “weaned”. They had just arrived at the pet-store that morning. Unfortunately, we were “gifted” misinformation, to make a quick sale and return on their money. A running theme in pet stores, I am learning.

A warning before reading on: the following story is distressing, but key to the reason I am committed to ethical breeding and long-term bird care.

A few days they began to show signs of malnourishment.

Unfortunately, their health began to decline again due to an infection which SASH later attributed to improper breeding conditions. I immediately took them to SASH in Ryde, who ran tests and performed health checks and told me they would likely not make it the next 24 hours. Salt unfortunately died a few days later, as expected, which absolutely broke me, but I continued on with the medications and strict regime the Avian Vet suggested for our survivor, Pepper. Fortunately, my other precious baby remains with us today and even has herself a handsome boyfriend—Grouch.

Throughout my journey with birds, I have experienced several instances of inadequate avian care, often being met with excuses like “nobody here feels confident treating a bird.” But instead of being disheartened, I have instead sworn to start my own pathway to become an avian advocate and fill the gap in this disgustingly understaffed profession.

Over the past few years, I have learned how to train aviary and pet birds through trial and error, but also dived into bird-care research (and as mentioned above, began studying along the lengthy pathway to become a specialised Avian veterinarian).

I have since ethically bred breeding pairs and pet birds, and hand-raised countless perfect baby birds, who now all have wonderful forever homes/families. I have also experienced working with pet stores which led me to learn to care for and medicate a large number of different birds and common ailments.

I have unfortunately spent some time with a Pet Store that many have judged me for, but at the time, I did not know what happened behind the scenes and I instead used it as a learning opportunity and a step in the door towards my animal career.

I learnt a LOT there, to their credit, however I also learned of the gross negligence and outright lies that some resort to in order to make a sale. I was even threatened on multiple occasions to stop giving out the correct information to customers. I however continued to give out the correct information, won the respect of multiple customers who continued to return for a long time after, and later quit my job after the owner showed no signs of wanting to change the way he operated the business and after multiple complaints on the fact no sick birds were being treated correctly, and the fact that multiple workers would lie to make a sale and would knowingly sell birds sick birds that needed immediate veterinary care.

I still get some people judging me for what they did, however, I was never a part of these things. Instead, I took the time while feeding the birds to interact with them all, including Aviary birds, watched them be autonomous, their behaviours, and traits and learnt to read their body language in order to become their friend and bribe their trust. I also learnt how to correctly hand-raise a bird, train birds, and did near excessive additional research into nutrition, dietary requirements, the facts and myths of birds and certain foods, house hazards, and enrichment requirements.

I advocate heavily for birds, and endeavour to become the place people feel safe coming to for information about birds, their care and needs, training, and accessories or cages to house their loved one which will not lead to later health concerns or injured birds.