Memorandum submitted by Cliff Wright
In regard to the new Animal Welfare Bill, and
the powers now supposedly given to the RSPCA I think that it will
definitely affect bird keeping as a whole.
In my own hobby of parrot keeping mainly Cockatoos,
who has the knowledge and experience to tell me how to keep and
breed my birds? Bearing in mind that I have had some for over
45 years ( and they are still living)
I have received 4 breeding medals for first
breedings in the U.K. My interest in birds started in 1955.
First Duty of Care is it right to feed
cooked and mashed pulses? Or pelleted food? Or extruded shaped
and dyed powdered mix? Or a parrot seed mix? Or peanuts, monkey
nuts and walnuts etc. Or just plain sunflower? My birds get plain
striped sunflower, parrot mix, sprouted white sunflower, celery
chickweed and dandelion, Corn-on-the-cob, fruit and egg food,
as well as peanuts, monkey nuts and walnuts every time they are
fed. Am I feeding my birds correctly or not?
My birds all have flights the smallest I have
is 12´long and the largest is 21 feet long by 4´ wide
& 7´ high all with inside quarters. But no heat only
lights and running water. I think that keeping them as I do I
am caring for them or am I?
Second Likely to cause unnecessary suffering
Now this can be seen in various lights. Is it causing suffering
to a breeding hen to remove her eggs sometimes as many as three
or four times a year and place them in an incubator, (in the wild
unless the nest is robbed by predators most large parrots only
produce one round per season) is it suffering to take the hatchling
and force feed it and allow it to become imprinted to humans and
sold as a pet? I have never used an incubator and only ever finished
one 6 week old Moluccan Cockatoo. People tell me that their birds
will not rear etc possibly the first clutch to a maiden pair will
go wrong and even the second year but eventually they get the
right idea and breed and rear their own. (this is even with appendix
one birds) Is it right to keep birds in all wire cages, or should
they be kept in long flights, and be able to walk on the ground,
and young, when they leave the nest for the first time crash into
the wire at the far end? Is it causing unnecessary suffering to
leave seed on the floor in the inside feeding quarters, cockatoos
are known to tip seed everywhere and then rake it over and eat
what they like first and then feed of the rest (it is also possible
for them to have enough food on the floor of their suspended feeding
shelters, that should anything happen to my wife and I the birds
should still be alive when it is realized something has happened
to us.
Would your Experts say that a collection that
never produces young but is spotlessly clean, is better than a
collection that has seed shucks and dust everywhere but has young
from most pairs every year ?
Finally, is it right that some youngster in
a uniform that has read outdated books along with a vet that has
no experience of parrots, to tell me how to keep my birds, even
zoos have not got the breeding records that private keepers have
but they are classed as experts.
I have bred Red-vented for the last 18 years
Zoos have bred none and lost most of their birds through bad management.
I could lose all my stock on the say so of RSPCA backed by the
Government, and have them given to Zoos so they can kill them.
Is this right? My birds all have Article 10 papers and until European
Zoos got embarrassed by private breeders and removed them from
their Stud books all my breedings and records were available for
any Zoo or Bird Garden to see.
21 August 2004
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