When we began feeding our own flock the very food that your flock eats today, we had no idea we would be feeding birds all across the globe with our foods! But, when we realized how much our birds loved their new food, and how healthy they all looked and how energetic they had become, we knew we had something we just had to share with the avian community.
We first began selling our foods on eBay in year 2000. Just a "hobby" for Machelle, she played around with each species adjusting their own food to meet certain demands she knew that particular species desired, and needed. She first formed all of the food by hand into a "bird bone" and hung it on a skewer for our birds to pick at all day long. But she wasn't completely satisfied with that approach because of the flour it took to hold the main ingredients together. Even though non-gluten flour was used, she saw it as nothing more than filler. She wanted our birds to receive nothing but whole foods. Foods that they could eat entirely without concern they were filling up on ingredients that would not contribute to the total nutritional benefit of each bird.
Machelle soon decided to make the foods in a mixture that would satisfy a bird's natural desire to forage, to pick up with its talons, to pick at while holding it and to create a color and taste sensation that would interest our birds.She kept working her formulas over and over until she found a mixture that she liked in color, texture, and smell. Now, would our birds like it? The acid test was, and still is with our new formulas, our birds.
Each day brought a brand new fervor of excitement to our home. A new food. A new taste. A new scent. A new texture. Who would be the first one to take a sample bite today? Would it be the old tried and true "piggy" of the bunch our Rose Breasted Cockatoo? Or what about our Greenwing Macaw, would he be the brave pioneer today? Or, maybe, just maybe, our picky Mollucan? Well, not time went by before we realized that all of our birds were going crazy for their new foods! It seems that Machelle found just the right mixture for each species.
QUALITY--Out to the organic foods store we went each and every weekend to find the freshest organic veggies, fruits, nuts and seeds that were available to us in our location! Machelle was determined that our birds would eat of the best foods available. We would arrive home with our stash of foods and go to work washing, mincing, chopping, grinding, cutting and dehydrating. Then one-by-one, we would begin making the food that Machelle had developed for each species of bird we had. At that time our flock represented five species. Our love grew and so did our flock and soon we were making species-specific foods for seven species and sub-species to those.
CARE--Soon we began producing our foods in larger quantities for a small community of online friends. We would buy the ingredients at our local organic store, brig them home and get to work. We found that from start to finish for one species-specific formula in a batch of about 5 pounds would take us about an hour to make and 24 hours to dehydrate. Then we had to package it and ship it. All said and done, our foods would ship within 72 hours of the beginning of production. 72 hours is a great turn around time for the customer, but we had to work day and night to produce each formula, dehydrate them and make labels for the packaging just for that species and then actually package the foods and then ship.
GROWTH(Update: As of October 2007, we have been forced to hire our first full time employee due to the overwhelming response to our products!)
-Our foods rose to rapid popularity within 1 1/2 years and we were producing 20 pounds of each food at a time. Each 20 pounds takes us about 2 1/2 hours to produce. And that is after we have already prepped some of the ingredients 24 hours beforehand. We then load it up on trays in our custom dehydrator and allow it to slowly and gently dehydrate at low temperatures for anywhere from 24 to 48 hours depending on the particular formula that is dehydrating at the time. Once the food is dry, we remove it tray-by-tray from the dehydrator and further process it by hand to make sure the "chunks" are just the size we want them to be for the particular species who will be enjoying our food. We then make the labels for the packages, again species-specific, and adhere them to the package. We measure out the correct amount for each package, place a "surprise" in the bag (we package the surprises ourselves too!), seal the package and place it in our species-specific bins. We have bins climbing from floor to ceiling and across the entire stretch of our 20-foot wall.
DETAIL-No one but us produces our foods. We have not been able to find the courage to have someone else (such as in a "food manufacturing facility") other than us produce your bird's food. We are a husband and wife team. George works a full time job to keep us going on the home front. I suffer a disability so I move slower on some days than others. In addition at any given time our flock consists of about 20 birds. Our family includes three small dogs after one of our dogs died with lung cancer. (A rescued former racing Greyhound.)Machelle's day are spent managing the web site, ordering ingredients from 15 to 20 different vendors to insure we get only the best of organic ingredients, processing the orders from our web site, communicating with our sanctuary affiliates and lightly overseeing the species-specific forums and our main forum, removing foods from the dehydrator, processing by hand into "chunks", packaging the foods, boxing them for shipment, spending hours on the phone with interested potential sanctuary affiliates, caring for our father, cleaning the bird room EVERY DAY, caring for our other pets and attempting to get some rest. George works 12-hour days, one night a month and one Saturday per month as well. He makes the food after work beginning at 8:00 P.M. and ending at 11:00 P.M. He gets roughly 5 1/2 to 6 hours sleep at night and then gets up and starts all over again. We do this 7 days a week, every week. We take no vacations. We don't eat out. Our life is spent caring for our birds and making your bird's food. Why? Because that is what we are passionate about our vision and our mission for the companion birds of the world! We are sincerely dedicated in every way to our vision to provide the best bird food on the planet aside from nature itself and supporting our Passion's Tree Of Life Foundation animal welfare member organizations who care for the birds that no one else will.
FUTURE--We hope that soon our retail end of our business/sanctuary network produces enough profit that we can hire employees.(Approximately 5 years into our business, accomplished as of October 2007). However, we choose those employees very carefully to insure that they follow our protocol to the point. Machelle promised herself that nothing but the best food would leave our facility for all of the other birdies of the world, we intend to keep that promise. So why does your food take so long to produce? People who care are producing it. We are people who will not sacrifice quality for speed. We believe that you have that kind of integrity as well. We believe you want only the best for your birds. We believe that, in order to receive the best for your birds, you will learn to order accordingly. Order 2 to 4 weeks in advance so that your bird never runs out of BirD-elicious! There are many things in life that require planning if we are to savor success. This is one of those things. We strongly suggest that you order your bird's nest batch of food at the time you receive your current order. This will allow time for us to process your bird's future food supply while he is currently "eating of the fat of the land"!
CLOSING-Understand that we have the best intentions for your bird's health. We will constantly be analyzing our foods to meet the needs of each species. Because so very little is really accurately known about the different species, we will need to adjust our formulas from time to time to reflect recent research findings concerning their diet and health. BirD-elicious! is not a food that will stay the same year after year falling behind in standards and becoming an obsolete food. Because we are independent and do not manufacture in huge bulk vats, we can make these changes while keeping our business small enough to maintain the quality your birds deserve. This is our passion, our desire, part of our vision and mission. The other parts of our vision and mission include our sanctuary and rescue affiliates. Every time you make a purchase of BirD-elicious!, whether it be our regular species-specific formulas or any of the specialized specie-specific formulas, over 100 different formulas, a percentage of your purchase is donated to one of our affiliates. These funds aid these organizations to pay for vet bills, buy cages, supply toys, and educate the public, transport birds and much, much more! We supply our foods at below-cost to our 501c3 affiliates. For those affiliates who are working on obtaining their non-profit status, we sell our foods at cost to them. Be assured that your dollars are stretched in every way possible to meet all of the demands of providing your birds the best in food and supporting the very affiliates who help maintain the integrity of the avian community.
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