Golden Triangle Parrot Club » News

Sad news from the Hagen Family

Suzan — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 00:10:34 +0000

Montreal, Canada – October 24, 2011 – Rolf C. Hagen, Founder and Chairman of Rolf C. Hagen Inc., passed away suddenly yet peacefully at his home in Montreal surrounded by his loving wife Marianne and grandson Justin on Saturday, October 22, 2011.

Please visit http://www.hari.ca/from-the-hagen-family/ for more details and to sign the guest book.

Sep 25/11 – Festival of Parrots & Annual Picnic

Suzan — Sun, 21 Aug 2011 18:04:31 +0000

It is hard to believe that we are planning for our Annual September Festival of Parrots & Picnic – WOW where did the summer go???

This event is also a fund raiser for the Canadian Parrot Conference’s Pennies4Parrots 2011 Challenge. There will be lots of games & competitions for members and feathered companions alike. This is the perfect time to show off your FIDs and their “special talents”. There are categories for everything, even the most “unique feathering”, so don’t be bashful, come one come all. Ribbons will be awarded to the winners. Once again we are trying to recruit none parrot owners for our judges – keeps the judging interesting!

As this is also our annual picnic we ask everyone to bring a food item to share. Drinks and all paper supplies (plates, napkins, utensils, cups, etc) will be supply by GTPC.

See you on Sunday, September 25th. The fun begins at 1:00 PM

Location: CAW Hall (small school house) located at 611 Silvercreek Parkway, Guelph (close to the Hanlon (Hwy 6) and Hwy 7 intersection)

Jun 15/11 Meeting

Suzan — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 15:06:07 +0000

Educational Video Night – We have several videos that would be great to view, so we will ask members in attendance to vote on their viewing pleasure. Living with our feathered friends is an ongoing learning experience, especially for us humans (lol).

May 28/11 – Garage Sale to benefit Pennies4Parrots

Suzan — Mon, 16 May 2011 02:56:37 +0000

GOLDEN TRIANGLE PARROT CLUB

invites its members to participate in the

GARAGE SALE, BAKE SALE & MORE

with proceeds being donated to the Canadian Parrot Conference’s 2011 “Pennies 4 Parrots” recipient, Macaws Forever.

Feathered friends are also welcome to show support for Parrot Conservation

Saturday, May 28^th – 9 AM – 1 PM

9 Tanager Drive, Guelph

Lots of Great Stuff

Bake Table (donations welcome)

Plants

Furniture, Costume Jewellery, Books

Parrot toys, gifts and cards

PROSCIUTTO HAM RAFFLE

January 19, 2011 Meeting Cancelled due to renovations at meeting location.

Suzan — Thu, 30 Dec 2010 21:50:23 +0000

The CAW Hall is using the month of January to do some renovating, so we regretfully must cancel our January meeting as the hall will be closed. Our annual toy making meeting will be moved to February 16th. Thanks for your understanding.

December event cancelled due to family funeral

admin — Wed, 01 Dec 2010 15:08:41 +0000

It is with our great regret that we need to cancel our event this Sunday. My mother-in-law passed away and I will be at a funeral this weekend and spending time with family and friends. Suzan will also be at the funeral. We both thought that under the circumstances it would be best to post-pone our event. We look forward to this event each year and and are excited about hosting it again in the near future. Thank you for your understanding.

Have a wonderful holiday season. We will see everyone in January at our annual toy making session. Details to follow.

All the best

Nathalie

GTPC Sep 2010 News

admin — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 19:11:27 +0000

September 12th, 2010 Meeting Summary

Dear GTPC Members,

Suzan and I made the executive decision to post pone our annual Festival of Parrots until December but still hosted a pot-luck picnic this past Sunday. This decision was made based on some recent happenings that we felt caused us to rethink club policies and to insure the health and safety of all of our feathered friends. We were happy to see a number of individuals at our meeting which allowed us the time to hear individual input and thoughts about the topic at hand. This is what was discussed at the meeting:

We had been informed at out June meeting that one of our new club members who had been attending our meetings with their birds had a bird die of PDD shortly after our April meeting (the bird that died was not one that attended our meeting). Unfortunately perhaps due to emotions or fear of how individuals would respond, this individual neglected to inform us of the post mortem results that confirmed the diagnosis (done at OVC). We had also recently been approached by other clubs in regards to PDD and how to create policies that would make sense for clubs and that would allow us to continue to mingle with our pet birds. This initiated the April meeting contact and having Dr Dale Smith talk about what we should be concerned about in regards to disease transmission. Things she discussed included taking the necessary percautions when adopting new birds such as having them quarantined, not bringing newly acquired bird to meetings, having your birds tested and so on.

Unfortunately this same individual has since been rehoming his birds without testing them or informing the new owners of the circumstances. This is completely irresponsible and our club does not support such actions. He even approached me about one of his birds knowing that I liked this particular bird – I was quite happy that I knew the facts and was able to confront him about them. I placed this bird in a bird free home in Cambridge (it never came home with me). It is still currently there and will remain there. It has tested negative for PDD.

About 3 weeks ago, my African Grey Parrot, Coco became acutely ill. Dr Taylor has not been able to give a diagnosis even to today. Thoughts ranged from bacterial meningitis, PDD, chlamydia (in the brain) and so on. So far she has responded the best on the antibiotics, so we are leaning towards bacterial meningitis. She has been tested about 5 times now for PDD but it has always back negative. This experience has been an emotional one but Coco is still fighting and is currently stable. Hopefully we can find out why she became ill but most importantly we just hope she continues to stay stable and get better.

There was a lot of emotion going around at the meeting in regards to their own birds, this is completely understandable. There is still a lot of misunderstanding about the disease in regards to what we already know and what is still unknown. Dr Taylor, Suzan and I feel that it is time to get everyone to better understand the disease. Even more importantly to understand the fact that we now have a test for PDD, we can take action and stop the needless spread of the disease. It is not the time to shun more people because they had a positive case in their home. It is time for everyone to take responsibility for the well being of our birds as well as educate themselves about the true facts of this disease. Here are a couple:

DID you know that there are birds that appear to be perfectly healthy but shed the disease on a regular basis – or even a daily basis? These are the birds we need to find and isolate.They can live happy lives for many years but it is vital that they are kept isolated from non-shedding birds as these other birds may not be lucky enough to survive the disease. This is why is it so important to have the birds tested.
Aviaries with PDD outbreaks do not typically have each and every single bird die of the disease. It is transmitted through fecal matter. Birds need to be in contact with the fecal matter to contract the disease.

Please take the time to get the facts correct as we have already had misinformation being passed on since our meeting on Sunday. If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to contact Suzan or myself and we will be happy to answer your questions.

See you at the October meeting!
Nathalie and Suzan

OCTOBER MEETING

Our meeting next month will have our club take an active part in this new PDD campaign (soon to be sent out by the conference). Dr Taylor will be at our meeting and paid up GTPC members will have the opportunity to have their birds tested for a discounted price of $30/bird. Dr Taylor will also be available to answer questions about PDD.

We will be asking individuals to bring in cash to pay for their tests. If you are concerned about your bird being at the meeting, we have a few suggestions:

keep your bird in the carrier in the room or in your car (we can come out to gather a fecal sample – keeping all doors closed of course!)
use hand sanitizer before handling your bird
we will also have disinfectant to clean areas at this meeting

Conference Ticket Raffle….remember we will be having a draw for a weekend pass to our conference at our meeting again this year! We have an amazing line up of guest speakers, so don’t miss out!

NEW CLUB POLICIES:

We would like to continue to mingle with both club members and their feathered friends. We all agree that being able to socialize our birds is important for the well being of our birds. My birds love attending the monthly meetings and we plan to be able to continue to provide them with that experience!

We will be establishing new club policies that will include the following:

Visitors will have to pay a $5 fee to attend their first meeting. If they decide to join, it will be discounted from their membership fee.
Students will have a membership fee of $15
Everyone will have to have their bird tested for PDD before they can attend club meetings. We know that there are other diseases out there but will only make this request at this time.
Your bird will need to be tested for PDD annually (regular fee is $40/test). We will arrange to have tests available at the October meetings each year at a discounted price.

Canadian Parrot Conference

Don’t forget to register for this year’s conference! We have some amazing guest speakers include Dr Irene Pepperberg, Sally Blanchard, Dr Taylor and more! If you have any good quality items you wish to donate to the raffle, please bring it to the October meeting or on Friday of the conference.

www.canadianparrotconference.ca

December Meeting

Join us for our annual Festival of Parrots! The festival will be an xmas pot luck, gift exchange and bird contest (club will provide drinks). Bring your feathered (and in some cases your “not so feathered”) friends and participate in this year’s Festival of Parrots. If last year was any indication we are definitely going to have a blast! There are lots of “unique” categories so everyone is sure to go home a winner. GTPC Award Ribbons are waiting for your FIDS. We will also have fun activities for owner and parrot alike with prizes for the winners. Don’t miss out on the fun. This year’s proceeds will be donated to the CPC’s Pennies 4 Parrots (www.pennies4parrots.ca) campaign (you can play games / get tickets tickets for as low as $0.01 to participate), so dig into your penny/coin jars and come armed and ready! If you would like to volunteer to be a judge or help out at one the stations, please let us know.

WHEN: Sunday, December 5th, 2010 starting at 1 pm

WHERE: CAW Hall (small school house) located at 611 Silvercreek Parkway in Guelph.

GTPC May Meeting

admin — Tue, 11 May 2010 14:55:17 +0000

Join us tomorrow night four our monthly meeting. Our very own Dan Webb will be giving us an update on his aviary.

Next month our our annual buy & sell. So if you have any bird related items you wish to sell or give away, this is the time to do that.

Jen Weber will also be giving us a short presentation about her encounter with Carlos Bonilla when she was in Mexico. He is involved in the Military Macaw Project.

Suzan will be away and I will be there by 7:30 pm. I won’t be able to stay all evening, so we will have to hold a shorter meeting this month.

See you tomorrow night!

Nathalie

GTPC’s New Website

admin — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 20:05:30 +0000

Welcome to GTPC’s new website. We have converted our site to a blog site to provide executive members with greater ease to update everyone on upcoming events and activities. We will no longer be using the yahoo groups and will ask all club members (and anyone who is interested) to register with this site. You will then be able to access site materials and can be set up with an RSS feed that will send you e-mails anytime a new posting is made on this site.

Enjoy!
Nathalie
GTPC President

ParrotMedics

admin — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 02:43:14 +0000

Our club put together our first series of ParrotMedics Feathered Friend First Aid kits at this month’s meeting. It was amazing how so many hands to get so many kits put together. We will start selling the kits at the Canadian Parrot Conference at the club table in the vendors area. Details will be posted at www.parrotmedics.ca ALL proceeds will be donated to Avian Disease Research at the Ontario Veterinary College.