About US
Steve, Marvin & Julie
welcome you to birdkeeper - here is a glimpse into our lives of breeding, keeping, maintaining, rearing our feathered friends.
I am a Scotsman residing and employed in the beautiful Wairarapa region of New Zealand with my wife, Julie. We moved from Scotland as immigrants to pursue our shared passion for breeding and nurturing high-quality birds.
Nestled in this serene location, we are fortunate to own a small lifestyle block, which serves as the perfect setting for us to pursue our bird-breeding passion. To support fellow enthusiasts, we have set up a cozy onsite shop where we offer a range of bird products and premium Topflite bird seed.
Through this blog, we hope to inspire and ignite your own love for these feathered creatures. Please don't hesitate to reach out to us or drop by our shop to say hello; we'd be thrilled to connect with you.
How it all started
It started much the same way as many people start breeding birds. Steves father bred a couple of budgies in the back garden in the UK and low and behold Steve was hooked.
We have been breeding birds for over 35 years now and started in the UK where we bred mutation Cockatiels, Australian broad-tails, African Grey Parrots, Amazons, Meyers and Ruppels Parrots, Budgies, Goludian Finches and many more.
As with many breeders it soon became a passion and we loved creating and establishing new mutations and hand-rearing parrots of all sizes.
We bred in the UK for about 20 years before we decided it was time to move to New Zealand. The challenge of selling up 20 years of birds and genetic lines was extremely hard but equally we looked forward to picking the hobby up again in a new country. Little did we know what a challenge this would actually be, given the lack of availability to import and the limited gene pool available in New Zealand.
However, we still managed to be fairly successful with Julie being crowned New Zealand Novice Roller Canary breeder and Steve helping in a small way to move bird clubs and societies into the technological age.
After deciding to move to a rural locations from suburbia we have taken the big leap to establish larger flights and have purchased quality birds to pick up from where we started all those years ago but on a much bigger scale.
Our passion for these feathered creatures is one many of our friends cannot really understand, but when they have visited our slice of New Zealand heaven they get the passion, but still think we are little crazy.
"Marvin"
"good boy"
"hello"
"what you doing?"
"Do you want a biscuit?"
"Coming out"
"WTF"
"dad's gone to work"
"Hey Mum"
"Rua"
"Marvin's a funny boy"
"Thankyou"
"Here you go buddy"
"You're agonying"
"Yeah"
"Kisses"
"no, kisses for dad"
"Marvin" "good boy" "hello" "what you doing?" "Do you want a biscuit?" "Coming out" "WTF" "dad's gone to work" "Hey Mum" "Rua" "Marvin's a funny boy" "Thankyou" "Here you go buddy" "You're agonying" "Yeah" "Kisses" "no, kisses for dad"
Meet Marvin - he is our house bird. He is an Eclectus Parrot. He was named after Marvin the Robot from Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.He was hatched in August 2017, this is a photo of him at around 4-5 weeks old. The photo at the top of him sitting next to Steve is from 2025.Marvin has a very good vocabulary, stringing sentences together and sometimes the words are when required. People do not believe that he talks as much as he does - as Marvin becomes very shy around people that he doesn't know and won't say a single word.He loves listening and singing along to the radio - heavy metal rock is his jam.
Marvin eats a variety of foods, nuts, seeds, lots of vegetables and fruit. But his favourite thing to eat is superwine biscuits, which he loves to dunk in his water.
Our boy does not fly, he has never bothered to learn.