INSIDE Parrot Stars! The Ultimate Parrot Store Tour (Rare & Exotic Birds!)

Hey, the tongue is just almost like a little finger. Hey guys, we're here at Parrot Stars in Chicago, Illinois. The greatest parrot store on earth. And today we're giving you the grand tour. I guarantee that you're going to see birds that you've never seen before in your life. Let's go. Parrot Stars. I feel like a parrot star. Hey Alexis, how are you? So great to meet you. It's so nice to meet you too. I feel like I'm finally seeing you in real life. We'll get to go into the bird room. Awesome. And then we'll go into the other bird room. Oh, amazing, amazing. And we'll go into boarding. Then I'll circle back and show you the baby room. Cool. All right, guys, let's go in. So this is what we call the showroom. Wow, it's amazing that you keep them fully flighted. I've never seen a parrot store that had the birds actually flying. I think that's phenomenal. Yeah, they do their own thing. They just get along and enjoy. We work really hard on the positive reinforcement training. Right. When we have them out like this, we all have the treat pouches and we're all trying to get them to come to us so that when we go to have the conversation with customers about like how to get them to come to them on their own free will. This is a good way to kind of show them how to do it. You're famous for this. The blue eclectus. Now, how did this all come to be? Were you specifically breeding for the blue eclectus or did this happen spontaneously? OK, we did intentionally try to breed them. When we first started breeding, we had only the one breeding pair. They did not breed again until this baby. So this is the nature of parrot breeding. So those first few years, we only produced like two or three babies, but we held them all back for breeding. So now we have a couple breeding pairs of the blue eclectus. And from what I understand, it's a recessive mutation. So the mother and the father have to have to carry it. Yes. How long did it take you to develop the mutation and actually begin producing visual birds? We were able to get visual babies because we had split parents. So parents that were carriers of the blue gene. I've always wanted an eclectus, but their diet requirements always intimidated me a bit. So I said, OK, I'm not going to wait until I'm a bit more disciplined and everything. We always hear it has to be a full natural diet, no artificial ingredients or vitamin supplementation. What are your thoughts on the diet? You talk about the whole food diet. Are you practicing that primarily with him, too? No pellets or what are your thoughts? We'll do tox pellets for them. We are always offering in moderation. So it is a significant amount of vegetables, sprouts, some fruit. Right. And then we do supplement with a high variety seed blend. And then we'll mix in a little bit of tops just for, again, the enrichment and offer something different. Wow. Definitely a phenomenal bird. Yeah, he's a good boy, right? I love you. Thank you. Where's Hickory? Hickory, can you say hi? Oh, good boy. He's a really, really good personality. Very outgoing. OK. Very social. Good boy. You've had Hickory for quite a while now, right? Yes. So Hickory was with me when I was a little kid. So he's originally a rescue. 20 something years later. And he's still with us. He never made it into the rescue. He hasn't aged a bit. He looks in perfect condition. Toby is also one that has lived in my household since I was little. And Toby's a blue fronted amazon. Blue fronted amazon. My understanding is that he's a chaco blue headed or blue fronted amazon. So he's a little bit bigger. That's why he has a lot of that pale yellow on his forehead. And then just a little bit of blue. He's in his 20s, too. And he's madly in love with Hickory. Hickory likes him a lot. Wow. But the love is a little one sided. Yeah. What are your thoughts on blue fronted amazon this past? You hear some people talk about the hormonal nature of males once they get to five, six. I think sometimes people use hormones as an excuse for lack of positive reinforcement training, lack of boundaries or structure being created in the house. So when they start to exhibit or feel that their bird is exhibiting some behavioral issues, all of a sudden we just, oh, it must be hormones. That's a good point. That's a good point. So I do think that we do have to be cautious about birds, that when we put them into breeding situations where we really know that hormones are playing a factor when we are breeding blue fronted amazons or most large species of amazons, we do have to be protective that the male is not going to be too intense with the female. I see the Indian hill my number. OK, OK. I've never seen one in person. OK, mind blown here. She is probably our most popular bird here. OK, yeah. Ironically, in a store full of parrots, where we specialize in parrots, that is the bird that people stand in front of her cage the longest. Well, a non parrot, but with incredible talking ability. Can you say hello? No. OK, bye. What would the diet be like for them? Because they're softbills, right? Yes, softbill, low iron diet. They, like toucans, can run into issues with iron storage disease. She loves her fruit. OK, she'll demolish it in five minutes and then we'll supplement with live mealworms for her. And she loves, I mean, loves the mealworms. That's amazing. And she's not afraid of the parrots. Wow. I bet. She's really, really smart. She will not let them corner her. If she sees one approaching, she'll either try to defend herself or she'll fly out. What would be your favorite species of parrot overall? I always thought it would be a green one. Like that was a species that I just thought was so beautiful. I love that they were humongous. I was never really intimidated by macaws. This is Rascal. And Rascal's the green wing, right? So this is my Scarlet. Scarlet, OK. The one that made me switch from thinking my favorite was a green wing to a Scarlet. She'll go right to you. Oh, really? So we'll use this hand because she likes to step up forward. OK, no problem. And then you can give her those kindness right away. So just step right up for you. And then just keep your arm real relaxed like that. And you can give her your pine nuts. Amazing. I can confidently have her step up onto a three or four year old all the way up to somebody. And it's taken a long time of desensitization. For sure. But she'll sit here and take pine nuts like this with anybody. Yeah. A complete stranger for a long time. She is amazing. Right? How old is she? She's about seven. She's a great talker. The thing that I'm least impressed about my parents is the fact that they talk. But I will tell you, it's really funny when they do. So I don't hate it either. She'll say, hi, hi, Rascal. Yeah. She says, I love you. Clear as day. Wow. And then she'll say, good morning. She says, hola. And then she says, goodnight. So I also feel very, very fortunate. We're now seven years in and I have a really, really strong team. None of this is possible without my team. Because I have a hundred percent confidence that they're going to be super respectful of the bird boundaries, too. Maria works with a lot of our birds. Hi, Rascal. Good morning. He's saying it earlier. Good morning. What's she got for you? She's got an in-shell nut. Wow. Oh my goodness. And at the front counters, do you see them as a bird that would be good for a beginner or more on the medium side? We used to always talk about birds in terms of beginner bird, more advanced, you should have experience in terms of like a starter bird versus a non-starter bird. I think it's like it could be just as much work as some of the bigger. That's a great point. That's such a great point. Ninety nine percent of what we tell people is positive reinforcement training. When we see the results of people and customers that go home and do the positive reinforcement training with whatever species versus the ones that don't, it doesn't matter what the species is, that they've done the positive reinforcement training. Yeah. They'll think it's really easy. They're such a natural, outgoing personality that if you do the positive reinforcement training and try to get them to come for a treat, they will. OK, so this is Nala. Nala is an African Cape Parrot. Nala, can you wag your tail? Oh, thank you. Most of my birds only do like one trick. Oh, hey, that's good. That's good enough for me. Step up. Good girl. Beautiful. Do you ever interact with one? Never interacted. A lot of first time. This is a cool species because the male and female are dimorphic. Females will have the peach forehead. Males will have a totally silver head. I love you. I love you. I love you. What a good girl. I love you. Good girl. Give me kisses. I love you. Kisses. And we have a golden conure here. Yeah. So this is Flip. One thing that I always make sure to talk to people about with the goldens is that they have a higher likelihood to be feather chewers or feather pluckers because we really, really push customers to not trim the wings after they leave. They literally have to sign off that they're not going to do it. OK. We've had really, really positive feedback from everybody that's kept their golden fully flighted that they haven't run into the feather chewing. There is so much enrichment associated with the flight that it helps deter them from being feather chewers. This is Baby. So Baby is also a resident, not one that's fully, fully confident going to new people yet, but she's probably our most skilled with our positive reinforcement training. She's incredibly motivated by pine nuts, but only pine nuts. Do you have specific nuts that you go for? I hear you talk about pine nuts and walnuts. So those are your two go to's? These are our go to's. And I think it's mostly because they're so high in fat. We don't open hand offer those treats without them having to work for them. For like their foraging rewards. They'll do. We'll do nutri berries. We'll do pistachios. OK, but when we want them to sit and stay focused for a training session, it's got to be something that they don't get all the time. Baby is a good opportunity to talk about the rescue and adoption process. Baby came from very, very kind people, but their knowledge of her was that they were her seventh home. Wow. Before they buy a bird, we try to talk them out of getting the bird before we try to talk them into getting it. We actually don't breed or do anything with umbrellas just because they have such a high likelihood to see multiple homes throughout their life. And I love umbrellas. It's not anything personal against the species. It's just that their body language can be difficult to read. Their noise level is intimidating. Their beak is strong. That said, we don't have endless capability to take in birds that need a home. But when we have emergency situations or we hear phone calls of people that we know they should probably surrender, we'll take them in. So they just really try to use baby as a great talking point and an example of why it's so important to really think through the decision. So this is Rue. She was one that I really, really liked as a baby. She is boss lady, right? Yeah, she's super confident too. So she'll let you give her head scratches. Rue, can you step up for him? And then just don't be offended if she flies off. Oh, yeah, that's cool. She's like, I don't know. She doesn't know me too well. Wow, look at them. So these are the babies. Yeah. And they're they love her. These are two little boys. They love you, right? She knows it too. Have you held gophins before? I believe young when I was younger, when I was about 12, I did. But a lot of first time handling here. So this is a fantastic. They're shockingly petite. Oh, yeah. There we go. Good girl! Olive! So that's a resident white-bellied caique. Beautiful. I'm obsessed with her. Yeah, she's awesome. She's very, very treat driven. She's easy to train. Yeah, they have so high energy. It's crazy. Did you notice any personality difference between the white-headed caiques and the black? I think they're pretty comparable in their personality traits, right? They're crazy. And they hop everywhere. You all hop. Oh, yeah. Wow. This is much larger than I thought. This is amazing. This is a black palm cockatoo. And they're native to Indonesia. Yeah, and Australia. Oh, Australia. Amazing. I've heard so much about how they express their emotion through the cheek. Yes, he can flare his cheeks to cover all the red. So sometimes you don't even see the red. He'll step up right on your hand. Now with him, he wants to have treat. Here, I'm going to give him to you to give to him. Otherwise, he's going to be totally fixated on me. All right. He should turn around for you. OK. You show him. Come on. Come on, let's go. He is totally suspecting things. That's some pine nuts. Of course. All right. It's still a parrot. Oh, yeah, exactly. Do what you want him to do when he doesn't want to do it. Wow. It's amazing. Yeah, the tongue is almost like a little finger. So they have a bone in their tongue. All parrots do. And that's why their tongue is so finger like. Their tongue is a huge part of their ability to eat what they eat and problem solve. He's not actually crunching the nuts. You're just swallowing them. Yeah, that's because the pine nuts are really small for him. They're small enough that he doesn't need to grind them. Wow. A lot of people talk about the drumming that a lot of black palms do. Do you experience that in captivity? I have not seen him specifically do that behavior. He is hands down the most destructive bird I've ever seen. When a tree like a java wood tree stand breaks, we'll just put the whole tree in there and he'll destroy the java wood tree like it's no problem. He'll go through the java wood and probably a month, two months. That is crazy. I mean, he is on a mission. That's amazing. Right? You're too talented. The only three large birds we have available for adoption that are surrendered re-homes are large white cockatoos, pigeon in the middle. He was bald, like a plucked chicken when he came in, but he's made a lot of progress. What changes did you make to sort of reverse that? The training. In my experience, when you take them out of intense boredom and give them a job to do, they often come out of it. Now, sometimes they've already destroyed their feather follicles. The feathers aren't going to come back no matter what you do. But if they still have the feather growth, a lot of times you can pull them out of the habit and redirect that energy into something different. Wow. OK. We have a couple of requirements before people take home a bird. When they have to show appropriate sized caging for the species that they're choosing, if they're getting a large bird, the cage has got to be a large cage. If they're getting a small species, we're going to encourage them to get the largest cage possible while still make sure making sure the bar spacing is appropriate. Number two is that they have to leave in a travel carrier. We don't put them in cardboard boxes. Got it. Number three, they have to purchase the food that the bird is currently eating. We're very strict about that. It's not to try to gain extra sales. It's that when everything in the life of the baby is changing. The one thing we have to keep identical is the food. And that's the only way we can guarantee that they're going to do it. Exactly. And then lastly, number four is that they have to sit through our two hours at home. What species are you guys getting? A ringnet? Wow. OK. That's really cool. I've never seen something like that. It's mandatory. It is not optional. And even if it's a second bird that you're purchasing from us, because we try to discourage people from getting them back to back. If we've passed more than six months, you must go through the class again. We go over all of household safety, training, behavior and socialization, all of the feeding instructions. And then we do our transfer agreement where, again, we go over. Do not clip the bird's wing. Right. And then making sure that people understand the commitment before they walk out the door with the bird, that this should be an all in, no take backs decision. Right. If we're going to move forward, it should be for life. Budgies, again, are ones that we are very cautious with people about, I think because they're so inexpensive and because a lot of the stores that sell budgies maybe don't do a lot of the coaching on proper training and enrichment. People can get discouraged if the bird is very fearful. Right. Or because there isn't a big monetary investment. Yeah. If it's not working for them anymore, they're not so opposed to giving it up. So we have a constant influx of budgie surrenders. This is our aviary of cockatiels. Wow, that's amazing. You can tell this is very tranquil. Exactly. I would have never thought they were 30 plus birds here. Originally, we did this for green cheeks. Green cheeks were the bird that we had the most of. We were using this as a space for them to fledge. But now that we keep everybody fully flighted and now they get to fly around in an even bigger room. Right. We hold this for cockatiels. And what age do you typically place them into this aviary? So they have to be completely weaned depending on the time of year and the volume that we have. If we have the space for them in here, as soon as they wean, they'll come in here right away. This is the one space that is a really, really fun area for people to pick their bird out. They come in with a little millet and we don't give them millet free willy nilly. Wow. There we go. We have them come down that way. People get to see a little bit more of their personality. If you can find one, that's just seems to be a little bit more naturally outgoing. The likelihood that they're going to take to the positive reinforcement training a little bit faster might be a little bit greater. It's a really cool space to kind of go in and kind of get them to come take your your millet. Back here is boarding. We don't bring customers back here. They have no ability to come back here. We want to guarantee to the customers that nobody's going to be poking at them, taunting them. So you allow everyone, anyone to bore as long as I guess they get their disease testing. Great question. All of our parent birds are fully disease tested. But then we also test every single baby. Dave and Allie, they've been here for a bit and we bred Allie. So with that situation, they're in extended stay boarding for a long vacation. OK, so in that circumstance where we know that the bird is not going to be totally freaked out, then we will do it. If there are one person or one bird home and they got the bird from us, then we can assume that their disease testing is good from when they were a baby. Now, because we did not breed Ava when they came back to breed, we had to retest both of them. I see. This is a yellow shouldered Amazon. He's really funny and he's really chatty. Oh, my God. Right. I love you, and he's all good boy. So it's not a very, very common Amazon smaller than the blue fronts and yellow knee, but not super tiny either. But they're gorgeous. A lot of similar personalities traits to like a double yellow headed Amazon. OK. Wow. Did you really lay the framework for most of the policies and procedures? Yes. So a lot of what we where we sit now is with the seven years of experience. I see. We were trying to be very, very accommodating. Right. But what we found is actually they do better just like going into the simplified environment, having us be really neutral. But something I was always very adamant from the beginning was that this was not going to be an area where people could go. So now we're going to be entering the nursery. We're going to check out a lot of their baby parrots here. Let's go ahead and take a look. This is what we call our visit room. If we want a little bit more of a one on one engagement with the parrot for them to see the true, genuine personality of what they can expect. This is where we do that. Red-tailed blacks are very, very noisy. I've never seen one in person. No, I'm taking it all in. Red-tailed black cockatoos. Oh my gosh. So rare. Her parents actually double clutched this year. Part of the reason all your black cockatoos are super rare in the United States. It's hard to find a compatible pair. So most of your black cockatoos will produce between one to two eggs every one to two years. It's wild. Oh, good girl. And then just keep your hand kind of low. There you go. Good girl. See, new people aren't scary. So you're making dreams come true today. Definitely. You do have to put them in situations where you're like slowly introducing them to new people. Right. If she was like this out there, it'd be really intimidating. There you go, good girl. All right. They're like best buds, so we'll let them out together. And the hyacinths wean around like nine months, is that right? Yeah, six to nine months as usual. He'll just let her preen his head like all day long. It's ridiculously cute. Almost the same age, so they're very used to each other. He'll just step right up. He's really good. Amazing. And then just kind of. Yeah, there we go. Wow. And I'm guessing with your breeding pairs, I guess their skin is all yellow. Is that right? Yes, it is really, really wild. So we only have one hyacinth that is feather plucked on its body. And it is really crazy when you see their full chest is solid yellow. What are you doing? They're in fledge. For sure. It's a constant wanting to fly all day long. How do you handle it all? Because I'm sure all this is quite overwhelming on a daily basis. That comes back to, again, my team. Right. I feel very fortunate because this is a business where we haven't had to have a lot of pressure put on to us to meet the bottom line, especially when it comes to bird sales. Our ability to do all the different things, the boarding, the grooming, have the babies, have the breeding program and do all the customer service. When I've needed additional help, I've been able to get it. We right now have seven full time staff members outside myself, and we have the support of volunteers. The days that I know that I have to let a hyacinth go home to a new family. Right. It's a lot of pressure on me to make sure because they're animals, but I wouldn't be able to do it without my team and ownership that supports 100 percent. Yeah. And like. So now he's telling you he wants head scratches. There you go. He's like, I was wondering what he was doing. What's going on here? He's like, hello, I've been sitting here and nobody's scratching my head. Yeah, I can't say enough great things about how you guys have structured this and the way you're interacting with the public. I feel like it's a different approach to aviculture because we can be a bit aggressive when when someone asks for help or has a question. And, you know, I see a lot of people getting just attacked on social media for simple questions, and we just have to keep sharing the knowledge like you guys are doing here. This has been a fantastic experience, truly a dream come true. So I appreciate the time. They have to have him come back. Guys, so you've seen it all. We're here at Parrot Stars in Chicago, Illinois. You have to check the store out. Check out their birds. Check out the large selection of toys, food and cages. This is the place to be for parrot people. It's a parrot center. Be sure to like and subscribe. This won't be the last time we'll be at Parrot Stars, so stay tuned for future videos.