Hello Everybody
Welcome to the second My Parrot Shop Newsletter!
In this newsletter we're covering some new features and products on the website, a note about price changes, and tips on searching the website.

Photo Gallery – live now!
Our new photo gallery has been added to the website for your viewing pleasure. We have 15 pictures up so far, and as we receive more pictures we’ll add another page, and hopefully many more. So if you'd like to show off your beloved bird on our website just email us a photo (as many as you like, and big file sizes are good).
  
We're also interested in photos of your bird playing with our toys so we'd love you to email us these too. We hope to eventually have at least one photo of every product with a bird, preferably more, as it really helps people quickly understand what size the toy is and whether it's appropriate for their bird.

My Parrot Photo Gallery

New Product Category – Parrot Food
We have a new category on our website! Food! Currently occupied by a small bird crumble, two types of pellets and a lorikeet mix.

We’ve wanted to have food on our site for a while now, but it has been a rather daunting area to move into due to our own limited knowledge on such a broad ranging and complicated subject and our reluctance to accidentally endorse an inferior (or even dangerous) product!

However we have a good relationship with an avian veterinary nurse who provides consultation services and runs a bird-boarding facility in Coburg, Victoria and, as it happens, avian nutrition is a subject she cares about very much. Her experience and background gives her a great understanding of the needs and idiosyncrasies of a wide range of species. She has been testing a particular bunch of products for over 6 months now and thoroughly endorses them. These products constitute the beginning of our food category.

Please have a look at these products even if you don’t need to purchase any food as there is also a plethora of information about bird nutrition, healthy weight ranges, converting your bird to pellets etc which many will find to be a very useful read. Some of this information can also be found in the Living with Parrots section in our information pages.

New Parrot Food Category

Wiffle Balls – Seek and Destroy!
Some of you may have noticed that the large Disco Ball has gone from the website. We decided to discontinue this toy due to its durability simply not matching its cost. We have some sturdier wiffles arriving in a couple of months, but we suspect the same issues will apply; that once the possibility is discovered - the wiffle ball faces imminent destruction. Such a pity as the Disco Ball was theoretically an awesome toy!

The Baby Disco ball however (pictured above), does not have these durability issues because the little birds just don’t have a big enough beak for that kind of destruction! It came through testing positively. Wiffle balls are a very popular toy parts, and when you see how much parrots enjoy their destruction it seems a shame not to offer them, so we are endeavouring to design more toys that will allow in their price the fact that they can be destroyed rapidly by the avid parrots. There are other kinds of wiffles available (we’ve had many examples sent to us) – but many of them are created from a plastic we feel would destruct dangerously when set upon by a big beak. All our wiffles are available as toy parts.

Featured Toys

Sonic – New & Improved! This was a good hanging toy for the big boys. Now it's an EXCELLENT hanging toy for the big boys. The original leather string holding it all together has been replaced with a stainless steel chain, making for a durable, long-living parrot toy.

Huge vegetable tanned leather triangles (about 50cm long) and big 4cm wide balls of wood strung on durable stainless steel chain. The pieces spin all over the place when grabbed at (a good exercise for dexterity), and the leather will provide months of munching.  Many parrots out there will enjoy draping the leather over their perch and sitting on the soft malleable material.

Crazy Block – A Refill Toy
A durable wooden parrot toy is what we want for our big chewers but finding one is another matter – introducing the Crazy Block! This monster chunk of wood is untreated hard eucalyptus and able to withstand the voracious beaks with a little more verve than your standard pine. We’ve added crazy cuts and circles to give your parrot the nooks and crannies they so desire for leverage when wrenching their favourite chewing material.

Price Changes
You may have noticed that some of our toy prices have increased or decreased.  Price changes occur for a number of reasons, including our part prices changing, alterations to toy design, and also the feedback we receive about the toy’s durability.

There have been some very nice changes to several toys on our site of late.  We won’t list them all here, as a great deal have been adjusted, but it’s worth letting you know about a few.

Largely Wiffle-ish has dropped from $15 to $10. Many of the Foot Toys have reduced in price. Some of our fancier toys have also reduced nicely such as the Raggedy Ann, now $29.95 and Wring World, also $29.95. 

Leather treasure (pictured here with Keiko) has increased to $39.95, mainly due to construction time (a difficult toy to make) and the cost of the leather, but the good news is that it has proven to be a long lasting parrot toy.  Keiko's had hers for several months now and it is still going well, and not for lack of chewing!

Till Roll Toys
The issue with our first Accountant toy is that the Bubble Flower Beads, so good for fitting over chain (oh for more beads like that!), are so destructible that you may find yourself needing to replace the beads when the idea is to replace the till rolls!

We have a second till roll toy up on the site now – the Junior Accountant (pictured left).  This parrot toy is great for the smaller half of the parrot family, and can be used for the bigger birds too, though the parts will need to be replaced a little more often (it is however more durable than the first Accountant toy, and parts are cheaper).

We’ve managed to reduce the price of the first Accountant toy rather than discontinue it because you can’t deny the joy the toy gives!  We are waiting on some new toy parts to arrive and will be adding more till roll toys then, because really you can’t have too many till roll toys!

All Till Roll toys & parts

Sitemap
We've just added a Sitemap which will hopefully give you a good idea about the structure of the website, particularly the Information pages. You can select the Sitemap by clicking the link at the top-right of our website, or click here.

Search Tips
Now that we have so many products on the website (e.g. 96 Hanging Toys so far!) it can sometimes get a little difficult to find the thing you're after. We encourage you to use the search function that's built into the My Parrot Shop website.

Tip #1 – If you want to find all products containing a particular toy part – e.g. wiffle balls – type wiffle into the search box. You'll see 14 different products, including the wiffle ball toy parts themselves. You could also use this idea to find e.g. foraging toys or dishwasher safe toys.

Tip #2 – If you know the exact name of the product, e.g. Wiffle Wreath, type it into the search box  with the word 'and' in between the words – this makes sure you get the exact phrase "wiffle wreath".

Note: the Search function currently only searches our product range, not the information pages.

That's all, hope you enjoyed our second newsletter!

The My Parrot Team.