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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 1987-05-27, Page 5THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, MAY 27, 1987. PAGE 5. Blyth couple runs a business for the birds Grab on to anything you can, this parrot seems to be thinking when he gets a rare opportunity to be out in the open air. Harm and Irene Thalen hope when these birds get mature enough, they’ll be able to breed them too as they do for many other species at their aviary in Blyth. BY KEITH ROULSTON In a quiet compound nestled beside the Blyth brook in Blyth the battle to save endangered species of animals and birds goes on. Harm and Irene Thalen own and operate Riverside Aviaries just north of the river on Victoria Street in Blyth, a home to everything from Canadian pheasants and water­ fowl to South American parrots and monkeys. While intended as a part-time business for the couple, a chance to slow (&wn a bit, it’s no hobby. The couple is very vocal about the need to breed some of the birds and animals they keep in their compound. They sell their stock mostly to other breeders and to zoos. They prefer not to sell to people who think it would be a nice idea to have the animals as pets because most often these animals are lost from the diminishing gene pool. Because many of the South American birds and animals are on the endangered list, often due to destruction of their jungle habitat in huge jungle clearing projects, it is illegal to import many specie? and zoos and breeders must make do with the stock that is already in the country. That’s why, the Thelans say, so many zoos and parks are happy to encourage their work. Currently they have a female capuchin monkey (the kind often seen with organ grinders) at the African Lion Safari park in hopes of breeding. The park had a male but no female, they had a female but no male. But most of the birds in the Thelan collection are from closer to home, geographically. It’s an exciting time of year at the aviary. In a remote corner of the compound a lordly mute swan sits on her huge nest of sticks, waiting for eggs to hatch. Elsewhere an Emperor Goose sits on her nest while the gander patrols the area. On the pond a Hooded Merganser duck leads a flotilla of ducklings in among the Canvasbacks and other ducks. Inside one of the buildings, the Thelans have two incubators full of eggs and two batches of chicks are already wandering the pens. Irene says that hatching is one of her favourite parts of the business, waiting for the eggs to crack and thelittlebirdstoemerge. Harm says that it’s exciting, too, waiting to see just what comes out. Because they have 15 different kinds of pheasants, they bunch the eggs of all the pheasants together for hatching. When the chicks are hatched it’s impossible to tell one breed from another. In fact, although the males are easier to differentiate as they get their bright colours, there are several breeds where the females are difficult to identify for all but the most trained eye. Harm says it’s exciting waiting to see if you’ve got $80 birds or $10 birds. Once he almost slipped up in separating the female pheasants and but for an honest customer, would have sold an expensive variety at the price of a cheaper one. The couple hopes to extend their hatching joys to tropical birds in the future but that takes time. But the parrots and other tropical birds that they got into last year take five or six years before they are old enough to breed. Even if the birds never breed, however, they make money just sitting there, Harm says. With the importation of birds now illegal, the price of some varieties is doubling and tripling in months. The same is happening with animals like llamas and monkeys. His first monkey, for instance, cost $500 but six months later the price for another was $1,000 and then prices climbed to $3-4,000. The business brings a lot of the wheeling and dealing Harm seems to thrive on. He’s on the road alot, travelling to visit various zoos and privatebreeders, selling stock, buying stock, in some cases trading stock or loaning or borrow­ ing stock. The couple have developed a thriving market for their birds. In fact, they have so much call for stock that they sometimes buy out the entire production of other area breeders to meet the needs of customers. Their catalogue from a past season shows that bird breeding doesn’t come cheap. Waterfowl ranges in price from $48 for a pair of Green-winged Teal to $300 for a pair of Mute Swan to $425 for a pair of Emperor geese. Pheasants range up to $175 for a pair of Copper Pheasants. The eggs and hatched chicks from their aviary have been shipped from the Maritimes to British Columbia and northern places like Flin Flon, Manitoba. The shipments have been by either Air Canada or Canada Post (they’ve had excellent results by special delivery mail.) For other birds there is a ready business with zoos from the African Lion Safari to the Bowmanville Zoo and the Elmvale zoo. They’re presently helping Howie Meeker’s son Andy stock a park on Manitoulin Island. The idea of operating a zoo appealed to Harm and Irene and they wereconsideringgetting a bigger parcel of land where they could invite the public in but the high liability insurance costs that have plagued zoos discouraged them. In fact faced with exorbitant insurance rates, some of the other zoo-keepers are considering taking the route they have taken: special­ izing only in breeding. The couple still delights in showing off their birds and animals to visitors but only on a non-paying basis. One of the big items on the expensesideoftheledger is the cost of feeding. Harm regularly visits the Kitchener market and others to get fruit. They buy cull apples from farmers to feed the stock and get grapes and bananas. Local food stores don’t have to worry about getting rid of greens left over at the end of the week because they’re always on the lookout for those. Harm picks up a load of 500 loaves of day-old bread and stocks a freezer with it to keep it fresh for the animals. It takes up to two hours a day to feed the animals. All of which doesn’t make it seem like the couple is nearing the goal they set out to meet when they decided to get into the business. They were looking at a move toward retirement. They came to the area in 1961 from the Hamilton area where they had sold a farm. They took up farming again in Morris township, first with cattle, Continued on page 19 The International Scene Margaret Thatcher on the road to success BY RAYMOND CANON Prime Minister Margaret That­ cher of Gt. Britain has called an election with the conviction that now is as good a time as any to become the leader of her country for another 4-5 years, an accom­ plishment that will set something of a record in British political history. I don’t want to dwell on the pros and cons of her first two terms of office; that will be adequately done, I assume, in the daily papers. What I think has to be done is to look at Margaret Thatcher as a person along with her political philosophy. I must admit that Mrs. Thatcher intrigues me more and more and I find myself taking the same approach toward her as I did toward England. When I first arrived there during my student days, about the only thing I commented on was that the weather seemed to be much better than what I had been led to believe. As I went back every so often, I found myself growing more intri­ gued with the country, its unique development of democracy, its contrasts and its heritage. Nowa­ days I am delighted when I find that I have to go back to London on business. It is a shot in the arm. So it is with Mrs. Thatcher. At the beginning she appeared to be little more than a very good-look­ ing, elegant lady that had taken advantage of disarray within the ranks of the Conservative party to become its first female leader. Gradually she has come to mean muchmorethanthatinmy mind and I find myself as much intrigued with her as with her country. She certainly does not come from the monied class. Her lather was what is called over there a green doctor. We might call it the owner of a corner grocery store, a dying breed in this country. She learned from her family many oi the middle-classvirtuesand, being gifted with a good academic mind, was able to go to university where she majored in science. One of her ministers has gone on record as saying that, if Mrs. Thatcher has done anything for the country, it is that she has made the British see, or at least many of them, that there is really no such a thing as a free lunch. She wants the national mentality to get away from welfare and develop far more self-reliance that it had. “She is,’’ he says, “the British equivalent of the sheriff with his six-guns, taming the old Wild West.” With thisattitude, itisnotsurprising that another politician, this time from the Labour Party, has com­ mented that the British voters respect Mrs. Thatcher but they do not like her. They like Neil Kinnock (the Labour leader) but they do not respect him. He may have a point: it is admittedly rather difficult to like someone who is nagging you all the time to change all your old bad habits. However, that is precisely what Britain has to do in many ways. So, it seems, do we all in a rapidly changing world. Certainly Mrs. Thatcher has shown by her own examplewhat has to be done. She has risen from modest means to become prime minister and while not everybody can hope to occupy that post, the message is clear. Everybody can go out and do his or her own “impossible”. After all, there is something about the British char­ acter that indicates that the stuff is there. I am an avid student of the Battle of Britain and there is no doubt in my mind that this stuff was presentatthattime. ItwasMrs. Thatcher herself who engineered the latest impossibility. Who would have thought that the small naval flotilla that she sent off to the South Atlantic to do battle with the Argentinians over the possession of the Falklands would have such a spectacular success? At a time when Gt. Britain needs to get its act together, it is perhaps fortuitous that it should elect a leader that comes to represent the very qualities that is needed to do precisely that. For my money, Margaret Thatcher deserves to be elected for a third term. The transition, if it is to be effective, will take longer than one might think; the longer she is in there to push and pull her country in the right direction, the better it will be.