Why has some of my favorite bird food and care products gone missing?

Last Updated on February 16, 2023 by

First little housekeeping.

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This weekend marks daylight savings time where we set our clocks back one hour.

My former brother-in-law who is from India never understood nor accepted daylight savings time because he could never figure out where the hour went.

Then again living in Chicago he was always confused about subway being a transportation company or sandwich shop.

In any case the continual changing light cycles in North America are hard enough on your birds. Much like my former brother-in-law our birds don’t understand it.

If your bird announces to the world that he or she is up at 6 AM. They will continue to do so at the new 5 AM time – you’ve been warned.

The same holds true to activities they may engage in as the sun goes down. They may want to spend a little extra forging time so be prepared and have something ready like Avicakes so they don’t miss a beat

I’d like to address why some of our most popular bird and parrot food products seem to be elusive. To start at the beginning, Catherine is a sergeant in the “best used by date” category police.

Windy City Parrot bird care

We receive bird food delivery shipments five days a week in order to keep the food we send you as fresh as possible. Because we keep our inventory lean, when manufacturers have out of stocks in their inventory we are one of the first retailers to run out of a particular product – think about that.

Dig from mitchr >> walk into your local pet shop especially the big-box pet shop nearest to you. All that bird food and all those tubes sold in bulk that look so yummy – go ahead and ask the manager what the “use by date” is on the fourth tube from the left. (there are no dates on those tall bulk bird food dispensers)

Then pick up some bags of bird food and look for the “use by dates” on those packages. Corporate pet shops and big box department stores have to buy much larger quantities in order to obtain their deep discounts and reduce delivery frequencies.

corporate bird care

Walmart does not get delivery of bird food five days a week. It gets several pallets every month or two. So look at those use by dates before whipping out the credit card (that hopefully has a chip in it) and then call us and we will tell you what our use by date is on any bird food product under our roof

One of my personal hot buttons is seeing a product, especially a popular product or products for bird care on our site – out of stock. With the onset of winter in North America three of our most popular products for feather care are currently unavailable or soon to be unavailable.

Because we get deliveries of our food five days a week to keep it at its most freshness, it also means we go out-of-stock quickly because we don’t want food getting old on our shelves, and neither do you. The downside is, when our distributors and manufacturers are out of stock – our inventory goes out of stock very quickly. So I wanted to take some time and provide explanations and alternative choices.

These three products from Avix which are produced by Harrison’s bird food have currently ceased production. During our eternal quest for the truth about bird food we received a response from Harrison’s and I quote

“In regard to the HEALx/AVIx products, Harrison’s acquired these lines from their former maker Zoological Education Network (which is now closed). There are a number of logistical hurdles involved in continuing production of these products as we deal with the closure of two of facilities that once packed these products.

Our hopes are that we will find a resource in the near future that make these lines available once again. There are a number of avenues we are pursuing currently. I hope this information helps clarify things. Please let me know if you have further questions

All the best,

Jean (Harrison’s bird food customer service)”

We never feel good about recommending a competitor’s line but in our role of being an advocate for the birds we know you need solutions not excuses. That said here are our alternative recommendations for these three AVIx products.

Avix Rain can be substituted with Feather-in Spray by Avitech

Avix Soother can be substituted with Feather and Skin Conditioner Bird Bath Spray by Natra

Bird Builder by Avix can be substituted with Immune Booster Extra Strength Extract by Avitech

If you see any of the AVIx products in stock on our site we advocate that you purchase them immediately if you are a fan of these products because they are sadly going away for now.

Circling back to the Out of Stock bird food thing, the matrix can be quite complicated. As an example, almonds are used in several of Hagen bird food products. Almonds have become in short supply because of the drought in California.

So they can send an elite contingent of Ninja elves into the Hagen warehouse in Mansfield Connecticut to scratch off by hand the ingredient “almonds” on 1 million bags waiting to be filled (like you see on a lot of Chinese restaurant menus) or they can re-source the almonds and wait until food can be produced to the original specifications so the bags can be used without intervention of ninja elves – as an example.

Dr. Harvey’s is having issues because our government has decided bee pollen is not good for our birds. Clearly the politicians running our country are experts on the matter of bee pollen and birds. It’s also quite obvious our politicians don’t know a gosh darn thing about the birds and the bees but in the meantime Dr. Harvey is up a creek without a pollen paddle until bee pollen is approved again as an ingredient for his fine all natural bird foods. How birds in the wild survived eating flowers with bee pollen must be a mystery to the people running our country.

According to Cindy at LeFebers, “where we’ve experienced no out of stocks whatsoever, regardless of the price of ingredients they get solely from Canada and the US they continue to produce the food without increasing prices”.

Sifting through all of the news about bird food not all of it is bad.

We (Harrison’s bird food) are now officially NON-GMO Project verified! All of our organic pet bird food formulas are now official.

High Potency Coarse – High Potency Fine & Super Fine – Adult Lifetime Coarse – Adult Lifetime Fine and Super Fine – Pepper Lifetime Coarse and Power Treats

ALL verified to carry the NON-GMO seal alongside the USDA Organic seal. It was a long and very involved process but now all the I’s are dotted T’s are crossed! Thanks to all of our customers and supporters!

Windy City Parrot takes pride in being a retail distributor of Harrison’s bird food.

written by mitch rezman

approved by catherine tobsing

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