Please get in touch to discuss availability and request a booking form informing me of your bird's personality, routine, likes, and dislikes. My goal is for owners to feel completely at ease knowing their bird is receiving the same love, dedication, and attention they receive at home.

Disease Testing:

Each bird will need to be disease-tested prior to boarding with us:

PBFD

Polyoma

Chlamydia

Bornavirus

This can be done in a few different ways:

Collecting feather & blood samples at home and sending them off to a lab for testing.

At an Avian vet.

Asking your avian vet to collect the feather and blood samples for you to send yourself to a lab.

The booking form / deposit can be secured without the results; however, results must be emailed to feathersonlyhotel@gmail.com one week prior to the arrival date. Failure to do this may result in cancellation.

Hygiene:

Aviaries, toys, bowls and perches are thoroughly disinfected with F10 before and after each guest.

Air purifiers run continuously, and the room regularly fogged as an additional precaution.

At the bottom of each aviary, either a large sheet of proplex is used to cover the floor or vinyl, with a sheet of paper on top, regularly changed.

The room is fully laminated, two large windows at either side with blackout blinds to ensure 10-12 hours of sleep per night.

Each bird receives regular photo and video updates, weight checks before and after their stay, and supervised out-of-cage time on a rotating 1-1 basis.

Food:

fresh vegetables and fruit will be provided daily. Please bring your own pellets and/or any additions to their diets.

Environment:

Viewings of the boarding room & a chat with myself is most welcomed and encouraged, both via video call or in-person.

We have three aviaries – two large and one small. The large aviary is 4x4ft, while the small is 4x2ft, both 6ft tall. Each aviary sits separately to prevent bickering between panels. Priority of the larger aviaries will be given to larger birds/groups.

Toys and foraging boxes/baffle cages will be provided and refilled, however if your bird goes through toys fast, it is encouraged to bring your own.

Routine:

The general routine will be breakfast in the morning, enrichment rotation and foraging throughout the day, out-of-cage time with me and family in evenings. Bedtime will be at around 8-10pm. I work a hybrid role so generally at home a lot of the time. There will be a camera facing each aviary, so I am able to check on them when away.

About Me and motivations for starting FeathersOnly Parrot Hotel:

My name is Mara and I’m based in the north of England. Establishing a boarding setup has been something I’ve considered for several years. My main hesitations have always been ensuring my own birds’ welfare isn’t compromised, concerns around disease testing and how feasible that is for average owners, and whether I could reliably provide the perfect setup with enough time and attention for all the birds including my own.

In the past, I have often bird-sat for close friends/members of the parrot community before, only because they did not feel there were many options around where to leave their birds, as it is very difficult to entrust your baby to someone you have just found on Google. Some friends have even driven a round trip of 8 hours to leave their birds with someone they know and trust, a great deal to travel especially when you need to travel abroad the next day!

Over the years I myself have often chosen not to travel due to the lack of trustworthy and knowledgeable boarding options for parrots. I own and free-fly both a galah and a harlequin macaw, and like most parrot owners, I regard them as my babies. I would rather stay at home with them than leave them in an environment I wasn’t confident in; with strangers I have only just met, leaving my relaxing trip away very unrelaxing! Will they be stuck in their cage the whole time? Will there be opportunity for them to fly daily? Will someone notice quickly if they seem “off”?

My galah, Shnuck, is my best friend. He is 6 years old and an avid plucker, hence the cone. Although I loved flying Shnuck, it sadly does not happen very often as without his cone he self-harms. He is hilarious, with his own sense of humour, and even those who aren’t particularly into birds still love Shnuck. His character shows through his crest which is constantly up and down depending on how well you are entertaining him. As confident and quirky as he is around humans, in the company of other parrots he is full of anxiety and fear. As well as having other random triggers (at times he has flown at me, bit and not let go when trying to change his water), I worry about him being misunderstood. If I was to go away, I would only leave him with someone I have known a lengthy time.

There is an urgent lack of appropriate care facilities for parrots, in the years I've owned parrots I have seldom found a facility I would entrust my birds to. They are my life. I want to provide something I would be happy with myself. Everything has been thought out, from the flooring in the boarding room, to maximising cage size as large as possible, hygiene protocols and a strict disease-testing policy.

Please do not hesitate to ask any further questions at all, and if there is anything you would like to advise with, feel free. I am still learning and advancing the set-up to optimise it as best as I possibly can for a variety of birds, from budgies to macaws.

Kind regards,
Mara
FeathersOnly | 07579 778689 | feathersonlyhotel@gmail.com