by JaydeParrot » Thu Sep 22, 2016 2:18 pm
I went to one and was sickened with what I saw, birds in terribly small cramped conditions, birds screaming in fear and fluttering about wildly and one particularly upsetting moment when a man looked at a bonded pair and said he only needed the female, I'll never forget the screaming, of both birds as they were forcibly seperated one put into a box and the other forced to remain where it was, they screamed for each other as the man walked off with the female, never to see each other again.
I have photos of alot of things that occured at the event, birds in cages so small they couldn't even stand up right. What angered me the most was I repeatedly tried to get the local animal rights agency involved, they danced around the problem for ages and then told me I'd have to personally take on the council for the district the show was located in.
The people at that show got very hostile and unpleasant towards me when they saw I had a camera, some even actually following me around for ages. Unless I wanted serious trouble I couldn't take on the council on my own, I could find no other fellow birders who wanted to get that far involved so I decided I had to leave it. My advise is that unless you know you can provide an actual good difference then don't bother going, all you'll do is give money towards a gangster style business of putting profits far above the well being of someone's own life.
As far as diseases are concerned I'd definitely stay away, you don't know where any of these birds have been and it only takes one diseased bird to infect an entire flock. My own sennies were brought from a fairly fuzzy background and four years later one died from bornavirus which apparently he must have brought with him because they were the only birds I had.
Purely for the sake of health and safety I really think these 'everyone bring your bird' places should be abolished. I got very angry one time with a guy in an avian vets who stroked my bird without asking before going back to stroke his own, I wasn't angry for my sake only, my bird was ill and he'd just happily potentially cross contaminated his bird without a single thought (the guy was apparently there an hour earlier than he was meant to be- the vet wasn't pleased).
So, yeah, that's my personal view on bird shows anyways...