  Hi everyone!! My name is Kevin and I live in a suburb of Kansas City called Shawnee, KS. I'm starting this blog off by telling about what life is like living with exotic birds. So, grab a soda and a snack, sit back, and enjoy!! Approximately 5 years ago, my wife purchased a Cockatiel for me. I had been interested in getting a bird so she purchased one for me.
I was thrilled to say the least. It was just a baby and we finished hand feeding it. That was an experience in itself. We named him Sammy. After a couple of months we decided to purchase a second one. We were really enjoying the 2 Cockatiels.
At the same time, my dad had purchased 2 Cockatiels. After having them for a year or so, he decided that he didn't want them anymore. So, quess what? Right!! We brought them into our home. Talk about a lot of noise!!
But it was a noise that we enjoyed. We named our second tiel Daisy, thinking that it was a girl. Well, we guessed wrong!! It is a boy. LOL The 2 tiels that we took from my dad are Cassie (yes, an actual female) and Simon. Sammy, Daisy, and Simon are are normal grey tiels.
Cassie is what is called a Lutino tiel. A very bueatiful yellowish color. In the summer of 2002 my wife and daughter and I went to south Florida for a week. We decided that while we were there we wanted to look for a Congo African Grey. We had read a lot about the Greys and had decided that we wanted to purchase one. We found a large aviary in south Miami.
After visiting with them, we found a Grey that we wanted to buy. One problem. We were having some major heat waves and no airline would take the bird because of the heat. So, we left Florida with no bird! :*( A few days after returning home, I came home from work one day to find a baby Congo African Grey. My wife and daughter had gone out that day and purchased one from a local breeder that we knew.
Wow! Talk about being excited!!! We named her Khiya (pronounced kie-ya) No meaning to that word. Just something we came up with. Grey's have the intelligence of a 5 yr old child. They have a vocabulary of approximately 1500 words.
They are absolutely amazing creatures. She talks up a storm and is right now going thru the terrible 2's just like a kid does. But she's extemely funny and entertaining! Never a dull moment. Ok, as Paul Harvey would say, now for the rest of the story. Since then, we have obtained, either through adoptions or purchases (mostly adoptions), a Blue/Gold Macaw (Mr. Bones), an Umbrella Cockatoo (Lady), a Jenday Conure (Sunny), a Greencheek Conure (Carrie), a Green Quaker (Hawkeye), a Catalina Macaw (Cleo, a hybrid between a Blue/Gold & a Scarlet), and our latest purchase, a 5 month old Timneh African Grey (Libby).
Talk about a crazy family!!! But, we love each one very much and get hours of entertainment from all of them. The only bird out of that group that we actually purchased from a breeder was the Timneh. The rest we have adopted. Sometimes when people go out and purchase a bird because they're cute and make pretty noises, they don't understand that this is a life long committment. Our larger birds, including the 2 Greys, can live to be 80+ yrs!!!
That is longer than most of us will be around after we've purchased a bird like that. In our case, our birds will go to our daughter and son-in-law (she's now married). Our club (www.beaknwings.org) gets calls weekly to come and rescue birds from people who either can't take care of anymore or who choose not to take care of anymore. Some birds come to us in an abused state. The club recently aquired a Cockatoo that had had all of its bones broken (literally, every bone) and stuffed in a shoe box. The shoe box was taken to a pet store in southern Missouri and left.
After $1500, the majority of the bones were fixed. The wings, however, could not be fixed properly. They were left intact but will never be right. Now, a lot of you may say, why not just put the bird down rather than spend that kind of money to repair it. Well, would you spend that kind of money to fix up your son / daughter if they were in an accident? I'll leave that at that.
Our Timneh is a special needs bird of sorts. When she was a baby, her parents bit off all of her toes on both feet!! She barely has enough left to grasp on to anything. But, despite this handicap, she has adapted very well. I just found her actually perching on the same wood perch that my Congo uses. I was totally amazed.
She has over come her handicap. We picked her up in March from a breeder friend of ours. She was concerned that she would not get a good home because of the lack of toes and knew that we would provide for her just as we do for the other 12 birds (oh, and our 2 dogs and 3 cats). Ok, so what is it like with that many birds in the house? CHAOTIC!!!!! It is never a dull moment.
Cages are all over the house. Actually all but 5 of the birds are in our living room, or what use to be our living room!!! Our day starts off at 5:45a. The birds wake up at 6:30a. Their diet consists of a special pellet called Zupreem. It is formulated with vitamins and, in the case of the variety we use, fruits.
We dehydrate vegetables every week and mix in with the pellets. They also get fresh, filtered water each day. We use newspaper the line the bottom of the cages so that all we have to do is pull out the dirty paper, throw it away, and put in fresh paper. That kind of sums things up (very briefly). I will write more later. I hope that you what I've written so far.
I would love to get feedback and any questions that you might have. You can email me at dejavukc@hotmail.com. Have a wonderful weekend!!! Kevin 
