A long-cherished dream of Eindhoven residents Ashley Beikes and Murat Can came true on Saturday morning. They opened their own parrot shop ‘Parrotplace’, which also makes them the first in Brabant: “We are extremely proud”.
The moment Ashley met her lover, it soon became clear that she had to share Murat with a lot of his feathered friends. As he says himself, he comes from a real “bird family”.
“My grandfather, uncle and cousin were already breeding birds when I was little,” he says. “From big macaws to canaries, everything came along. I found parrots interesting and got into it. Ashley actually had little choice. I told her: this is what I’m going to do, I hope you like it!” the bird breeder says jokingly.
Ashley has to laugh: “At first I said, I don’t want the whole garden full of cages, mind you! But in the end, I did go along with it and fell completely in love with the parrots anyway. So Murat did kind of turn me around.”
Intelligent birds
And why do they think parrots are so special? The two can hardly stop talking about their favourite subject: “They are super intelligent and have the mind of a three- to six-year-old child. With patience and the right treatment, you get a lot of love back from those creatures.”
Acrobatic black-headed cockatoos, a fussy yellow-crested cockatoo, happy sun parakeets and a lot of enthusiastic bird lovers – Saturday morning is a mad rush in Brabant’s first parrot shop. Someone from Eersel said: “We always had to drive all the way to a specialist shop in Hoorn. And with a bird that is carsick, that is an absolute drama!”
Toys
She also explained that many pet shops often only have a few toys for parrots and that her bird quickly gets tired of them. But today, she has her hands full of toys: “We found just the thing here and bought some new toys, so our bird can demolish them again!”
Parrots get bored quickly. This makes sufficient toys and attention especially important, Murat says: “A parrot has to stay busy. Of course, not everyone is at home all day and if a parrot languishes in a cage, it will scream or pluck its feathers.”
This is why he also advises alternating enough toys: “Change some toys every week. If we eat a burger every day, we don’t like it either after a while, right? We should always have different snacks too,” he says with a wink.
Impulse buy
The couple knows better than anyone that parrots are animals that require a lot of care. That is why they pay close attention to the sincerity of customers who want to buy a parrot: “We make sure that people do not buy a bird on impulse. Parrots can live up to fifty to eighty years and are therefore often more than just a friend for life. A person needs to think carefully about that,” says Ashley.
To make sure an animal ends up well, Murat often puts interested parties to the test: “I always check whether people have thought it through. When in doubt, I often say: ‘Take them out of the cage’. Do they flinch or do they dare? You can see that right away. And if I see that people have huge doubts, I don’t sell the bird. It’s as simple as that.”
Besides proving to be clever cookies de, the critters can also be quite fussy. For this reason, the shop owners have a special ‘baby room’ in their shop: “Here we release the bird and can see if there is a click between animal and owner.”
Now that their dream has come true, the couple is already looking forward to the next goal: “If people walk out of our door satisfied with a friend for life ánd have good information, then we are satisfied. That’s what we really do it for. ”
Source: Studio040.nl
Translated by: Anitha Sevugan
