where do you get your stuff?

[steptoe91(tozie)]

so we all have to get stuff for our angels, right? stuff to feed 'em. stuff to line cages. stuff to clean cages. stuff for them to play with. ya know, stuff.  and its well known that most people are rather loyal to their retailers and/or brands of choice.

cleaners:

Biokleen product line. its a 'green' line. i generally get it online either at walgreens.com (cause i get an employee discount) or at drugstore.com (same reason). but sometimes i need it NOW. so i get it at Earth Origins, a green grocery store.  my two favorites are Bac Out, and enzymatic cleaner and the concentrated all purpose cleaner.

wood:

pine, Lowes. generally i've found Home Depot is less willing to cut the wood for me... you try cramming a ten foot long 2x4 into a freaking mustang!  i get the untreated 2x4's, 1x2's, and 1x3's

balsa, National balsa on the web. they have a $25 minimum order but its not hard to hit that! lol! since most of the wood is chopped to smaller pieces, i do the math to get the cheapest product based on price per square inch, in particular 1x1x24 at $1.62 a stick. just placed an order today, as a matter of fact! 

toy parts:

wow! so many places on the web! i actually made a spread sheet comparing different prices for similar products... and have found, that just cause the description LOOKS similar, doesnt me the product IS similar! 

my all time favorite is still California Bird Nerds. generally they have the best prices for the quality of the product in question. i have ordered from Blu's bird toys with great success... and there's another but i cant quite remember who... will get back to that one when it comes to me.
of course, locally, dollar tree is definitely my friend!

food:

still basically the old standby companies: petsolutions.com  drfostersmith.com and mysafebirdstore.com  i love the bountiful harvest by mysafebirdstore.com for skittles and calebs cage mixes.

and of course nuts and grains (and the occasionally yummy candy for mom!) from nuts.com

so who do you order from? is there a store ya drive 30 mins out of your way to hit on errand day? how about a newly discovered treasure?

[Sapphire]

I get most of Codie's toys from a place called "Scarletts Parrot Essentials" which is an online shop here in the UK! I buy all his food from the "Parrot Centre". This is just a 15 minute car ride from me. I buy lots of fruit and veg from the local supermarket and make his dinners in batches and freeze them :)

[Sondra]

I buy Zupreem either online, I look and see who has it on sale and buy from that place, if I forget I'll go to PetCo but that is the next city over and about a 30 minute ride. I feed seed as well and usually get that from Pet Depot, I buy Sunscription. Nuts, I buy them in bulk, in the shell, AFTER the Holidays and freeze them, so I have nuts all year. We own 56 acres of wood land and cut all the wood I need, plus hubs used to be a master carpenter and he still "tinkers" so we always have wood.

I always cook for the birds and usually only make enough for two meals at a time. I do make bird bread, bird pancakes, and squash and sweet potato and freeze it. The squash and sweet potato goes into ice cube trays one cooked and I just pop out what I need for that days meals.

[Debra]

I use MSBS, Drs. Foster and Smith, and just recently found everythingbirdsonline.com. They have a mega mix of food that my picky Lucy loves! I've never seen her tuck into anything like this food. Little Amber likes their mini mix too. Frankie, the tiels, and the budgies love their fruity Zupreem.

I have no wood chewers, but Lucy does like to shred boxes. Little Amber's favorite toy is moulted feathers -- something I have plenty of. lol

[plantsandbirds]

My odd parakeets didn't like the Drs Foster Smith food.   

They love Hagen seed that I order through Amazon.com.  Recently I found a really good finch food through Amazon.com too.  It's called Kaylor-made and has herbs and dried fruit in it.  The three finchie boys love it!

[Debra]

Well, I'm bummed. My favorite store (Everything Birds Online) has closed as of today. This means I have to find another store to get food for Lucy. Luckily, I got an order of food for her just as they were closing so I'm good for a while. Kathy gave me the links to some other stores that have similar food. Guess I will have to go shopping and researching.