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| - I read the reviews and I still thought I'd give Cage World a shot. See, I'd read reviews of a couple other places I liked and some were dead wrong, so I thought Cage World might have received a few bogus reviews. My son and I went in trying to find the positive and to form our own opinions.
When we arrived there were lots of cages outside the shop for sale. We thought, "Hey this is great! Look at all the options!". Then we went inside. It was kind of dark and dank in there, but we were told (much later) that they were about to move the shop to a different locale so we figured they were trying to upgrade. We weren't really concerned with the lighting anyway, but with the birds.
When we walked in, no one greeted us. Even though there were employees in the back that could see us, no one bothered to get up to come say hi. Finally a young boy who was cleaning came out and said hi. He was very polite and answered questions we had about the birds in their "Babies" section. I'd never seen a baby Macaw before and was asking how old it was, etc. Other "Babies" in that area didn't look all that young, but I don't really know what they are supposed to look like so I put it down to my ignorance.
We wandered around and went in the back area where all the cages were. Then we saw the back area where they have the boarded birds, etc. Ugh. There were literally small plastic bins with baby cockatiels inside with just a bit of metal cage parts covering the top to keep them in. Overly crowded is putting it mildly. Birds in a plastic bin. Even my ignorance couldn't be blamed on this sad state of affairs. No animal should be crowded like that. EVER. One baby had hopped up on top and later flew down to the floor. We figured maybe we just didn't realize how shops worked so we returned to the front where their birds were.
Yes, they DO have birds in giant aquariums in the front of the store. They didn't seem to be overly crowded, but there were lots in there. I thought why would BIRDS be in an aquarium at a store that calls itself CAGE WORLD? And there were signs on the aquariums advertising the birds inside as "Hanfed (their spelling) cockatiel" and some of the prices were up to $150.00. ( Later we had a young man try to get us one to hold and the birds in their freaked when a hand came in. Those birds didn't appear to be handled all that often, which he semi admitted.)
Finally a nice young man came up to us (apparently just back from lunch as he was carrying McDonalds french fries around with him) and started chatting and answering questions. While he walked around with us he was feeding french fries to the birds. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think french fries are part of an exotic birds diet - especially ones you are trying to sell to the public. I get it, if its your personal pet, but these were birds for sale. A little later one of the big birds was doing something and another employee grabbed it by the tail as it was trying to get away from him and he swung it around by the tail. My son is still upset by that one.
The young man told us he'd been working at CW for 5 years so he can't plead ignorance about feeding the birds french fries, or trying to sell us small cage for cockatiels that shouldn't even be used for a parakeet, let alone a bird that can grow 12-14 inches high. Telling me he kept his pet cockatiel in one of those didn't make me want to get it. By the way, none of the cages they made, that he showed me, had any horizontal bars for the birds to climb on. I thought bird cages needed at least two of the walls to be horizontal. Anyway, the boy tried to tell me that we could just put the perches lower in the cage (they'd have to be on the bottom of the cage) to accommodate medium sized bird like a cockatiel.
I was a little shell shocked by this point and wanted professional opinions about these cages, so I pretended to ask my husband (via text) if we could buy a cage (as we were told "TODAY ONLY you can get a 20% DISCOUNT), and took pics of the cage so I could ask my friends at another pet store and at the bird rescue I associate with. Finally, after walking around a bit longer (they did have two very sweet birds that I kept walking over to see while trying to check out an extremely over crowded cage of older parakeets/cockatiels) and letting my son look at the food they sell and toys for birds, we left.
I feel so sorry for the birds in that store. Over crowding, being treated the way we saw (french fries and swinging around by the tail) and yes quite a few of the birds had plucked out their feathers (and I'm not just talking about the birds in the back, I mean the ones out front), and just a general sense of gloom and doom in there. We won't be going back and not only would we not recommend the shop but will go as far as to warn folks away from them.
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