Market finches :(

[Fraza]

On holiday in Spain and was at a market today to see loads and loads of zebra finches cramped into a tiny cage Very ILL and poorly with eyes closed and feather loss didn't even know this was legal must have been about 50 in a cage suitable for 6 birds

[Icearstorm]

Fraza
Unfortunately this is fairly normal. Stacked cages are also common, where poop from the birds above fall on the ones in the cage below. As a result, the rate of disease transmission is high.
Bird trafficking is even worse; there are so many birds crammed in a cage that sometimes there is no room for them to move around or open their wings. Up to 90% of birds transported like that die.

[lovezebs]

Fraza

Good grief!

It's horrific, the stories that come in from different countries around the world. You don't want to see pictures from some of the bird markets in Asia, it's absolutely heart breaking.

[lovezebs]

Icearstorm

You think cages are bad...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... stoms.html

This is quite common by the way.

[Icearstorm]

lovezebs
I've heard of putting birds in pringle cans for temporary examination, but not birds in water bottles for who knows how long... Pet reptiles and amphibians are commonly transported via water bottle and often are injured or die when someone isn't careful cutting into the bottle. And then there was someone who stuffed monkeys up their pants to try and smuggle them through security...

[lovezebs]

Icearstorm

I hope they bit him in the Hoo-Hoo.

[Fraza]

elana that comment made me laugh and it is sad it wasn't just finches in the cage with them either there was another 2 birds in there slightly bigger and abit yellow

[Fraza]

And I can't believ that link u put on about those cockatoos unbelievable and bet these people weren't even punished enough

[lovezebs]

Fraza

It's a cut throat business, and these people don't care how many birds die, as long as they make enough money on the sad few that survive against all odds.

We had a member here who lives in Asia, where they capture tens of thousands of birds for the bird markets. Many are dyed into all sorts of gaudy colours and sold as cheap toys for kids, and rarely survive for more than a few hours, dying in all sorts of horrible ways. Others are kept in tinsy tiny cages, where they can barely move and kept like that for the length of their lives.

It's a cruel world we live in, and animal rights exist in only very few countries and very often don't even apply to tiny birds .

[Fraza]

Yeh I was shocked about the Pringle tins

[Icearstorm]

lovezebs
I have to wonder if things would get better if illegal bird traffickers were given access to other jobs (but then again, the new jobs might also be illegal). If the illegal bird trade operates like the drug trade, only those at the top make lots of money, so supplying other jobs to those at the bottom should be relatively effective.
It doesn't seem like there are many animal welfare and trafficking laws, and the ones that currently exist are under-enforced. There are more immediate concerns for poorer countries (human rights, food, health care, etc), so it is unlikely that ratification of animal welfare laws would be very useful to them at this point in time.

[lovezebs]

Icearstorm

It's very difficult to fight illegal trafficking of anything really. For every trafficker that gets caught, there are a thousand more to take his place.

As long as there is a market for 'whatever', there will be someone willing to supply it for a price. The old supply and demand situation that you have with anything from drugs, to animals, to guns, to ivory, to women and children. Sad, but true.

[sparrowsong98]

lovezebs how do you fit a cockatoo in there? wait... on second thought dont answer that. I dont want to know

[lovezebs]

sparrowsong98

No, you probably don't.....

[Icearstorm]

lovezebs

I imagine it the number of poachers settles at an equilibrium dependent on the job pay and amount of birds available. With most traffickers being disposable, they must not be getting high pay, unless the traffickers are self-employed and don't use a middleman for sales, that is. Surely there's a documentary on the logistics of illegal activity somewhere. The book Freakonomics had some good information on the illegal drug trade in the United States, but I haven't heard of other good sources for similar topics.

As for people killing the birds so quickly after they get them, what's the point of a bird if it isn't going to be around for very long? It almost seems like they're being treated like orchids; something that looks good at the beginning, then dies a few weeks later to be replaced by another one. Though many of the birds are in such poor feather that they start to look like featherless chickens; why would anyone want to buy those? I guess the bottles keep the birds from plucking, but their feathers still get rather soiled.