Bath Time!

When it gets hot, we all like to cool down with a nice shower, especially the Red-browed Amazon parrots. Here are some shots of bath time via shower by hose. The birds love this, and end up soaked to the skin. As you can see, they hang upside down, spread their wings and thoroughly enjoy themselves!

Pic of the Day!

We discovered new pygmy marmoset twins this morning. Mom gave birth late last night or before dawn today. Hard to photograph in the best of circumstances, so all I could get was a shot from the outside. Mom is VERY SHY. I'll try to get more over the next days and weeks when the babies are a bit bigger. These are fresh from the oven! Mom is great, nursing both at the same time. SO TINY!!

Adorable Pygmy Marmoset Photo of the Week!

One of our new babies...SO CUTE!!!

2010 Babies!!

We thought you would like to see some photos of this year's baby red-browed Amazon parrots. The "Fantastic Five" are now fully weaned and living most of the time in their new flight cage. We bring them inside during the hottest part of the late afternoon and overnight. Soon they will be completely acclimated to thier new enclosure and will stay out full time. When we bring them inside, they are usually hot and tired. So, you will see in the last few photos that they enjoy a good bath to cool off!

We will soon know the sex of each bird, we sent off some feathers for DNA sexing just last week. We'll keep you posted!

Pygmy Marmoset Munchies...

We have a new FlipShare video camera, and we're all having fun figuring out how to use this neat little device. Here is a short video of a couple of our pygmy marmosets enjoying mealworms and crickets for lunch. Forgive the shakey quality--we're learning! We promise, the videos will get better with practice!!

Baby Bongo!!

On Friday, July 9, 2010, we welcomed a new addition to our bongo family. Although, she wasn't discovered until Sunday. This is due to the fact that usually the mother will hide the baby when it's first born. It gives the baby time to acclimate itself and get its foot barrings. We believe our new little baby is a girl! Off first look usually the head gives away the sex. Males have larger heads. So far the baby has been doing very well these past two weeks. She's been hanging out with one of our big male bulls. Clearly she feels safe laying around with him. Below we have a few small video clips. It's a little difficult to see her. She definitely stays away from us, so it's hard to get a really close up visual on her. She's strong and running around. So far this year we have a total of five new baby bongo! One of the videos includes the other older babies, laying around with a couple of adults. You can tell the difference by the fact that they don't have horns yet and if they do they're very little.

Summer and More!

Well, summer is finally here, and the farm is alive with activity. We've been so busy we haven't had time to post lately! Our parrot breeding season has been extremely successful, with five new baby redbrows almost weaned and ready to take flight in the new enclosure we just built for them. We have four baby bongo on the ground and running, and our pygmy marmoset colony has increased as well, with new babies everywhere. All are doing well, more photos to come soon!

We also have some new and returning staff members on our team. Neil Grossman, who was our summer intern last year, is back for the month of July. We're happy to have him and put him to work immediately!

We also have welcomed Tony Sheets, our new Director of Operations. He will be managing our 30 acre facility, which will be a BIG help. Tony is from Daytona Beach, and has been a volunteer with RSCF over the past few years, helping out with our overseas program on Dominica and lending a hand on the farm whenever he could. We are very happy to have him as a permanent addition to the staff! Tony will be residing on-site, so we welcome him to his new home!

Here are a few pictures of what we've been up to, many more to come!