hi i'm mandy pryor and welcome to spotlight on pittsburgh spotlight on pittsburgh is a program about pittsburgh most fascinating people and what they do to make pittsburgh an amazing place to live and work when we come back i'll introduce you to our first guest that guy with the bert as you can see i buttercup with me already and later we'll have a gentleman from the pittsburgh pet expo rocker lubanga who will be talking about what's coming up this november well after the  get checkups doctor and dentist visits hospital care prescriptions and your child may qualify based on your family size and it's one less thing to worry about caller go on line to enroll now why w can and thank you so much for coming on the show and bringing you our feathered friend absolutely so how does it look you know when you have perfect it's good absolutely so what can you tell me how did this that guy with the birds how did i get started well it was actually started by a very dear friend of mine his name was jointly and i worked with john the last ten or twelve years john started a rescue for parrots in one thousand nine hundred eighty just trying to take unwanted abused and neglected parrots we have unfortunately lost john to cancer it will be two years this march and before his passing he asked if i would not only take over the educational programs but wife and i had twenty two birds to start with all rescues i was just like everybody else as a kid i had cockatiels was always fascinated with birds and then i could sit around fifteen years ago  purchased an umbrella cockatoo very similar to django here on my lap and i brought him home i named him captain morgan i thought it was the coolest thing ever and i had done some homework but not enough and i was fortunate enough to meet john we happened to shop at the same store for our bird food and we hit it off instantly became friends so i started travelling with him we've travelled all around the country doing shows and just trying to get the word out it's not that we condone people owning parrots but we want you to do your homework before you get one this is a lifelong commitment they live a long time do they do a big macall like alvy over here can live to be over one hundred years old with the that's bad yeah yeah and so what can you tell me about these three well i'll be excuse me it's called a green wing macaw parrot is a family of birds and then you have the breakdown you  is breeders have taken two of the original of the seventeen and now have been or bred them so if you take a blue and gold my car and you take a military my car you would  what's called a miller gold now from the second generation you can actually have third even fourth generation of it's almost like dogs where yeah you have a cock up there not no longer a pedigree exactly sleep depends on what the birds say whenever i go in the years in the morning whoever wants to go there we burn them along and so what can people expect when ever they come see a show where we basically having fun entertaining and way of learning about birds not just parrots but birds from all around the world we talk about eagles and kong doors and austria jews and you know just some of the kind of interesting facts about birds that people may will suck up as much attention as possible but the bad part is if if they don't receive that tension they can really develop some bad habits they scream very loud they'll pull out all of their feathers just in frustration rain well molting is actually a naturally occurring thing the birds go through when they lose their feathers and get new ones in but a parrot because they're very intelligent their mind is always being stimulated and when they don't get that stimulation they will become frustrated and actually pull out their feathers just in frustration it's very very you know it's you know whenever you see that you're like oh  need to take care of him and sure yeah for sure and what about the love bird love birds they're actually pretty easy to care for she's she can be a little trying sometimes but she's trained to sit on top of people's heads the funny thing is is we do a lot of outdoor festivals and fairs things like that kids will stand in line for hours just to hold a few birds when it's their turn that they get up there and their  scared by the smallest one so what we've done is we've trained buttercup to sit up on top of mom or dad ted and then there's the kids see that they start to smile wave think it's really neat and then we'll go ahead and put buttercup up there to and you say which one is your favorite and obviously you don't have a favorite you love them all equally these are my kids and i love all of them buried much dearly and i can't say that i have one in particular that was my favorite i did years ago when i'm bird picks you to be your knight it's a pretty how credible feeling and years ago the first bird the really chose me was a blue and gold macaw his name was gunner and i had fortunately lost gunner to a tumor and yeah but he was probably my all time favorite and i miss him dearly but he was a really sweet bird he didn't like my wife so much but that happened oh yeah there they pick up her things they do they do yeah and so do these do these guys do any that they should know well a lot of times the breeders one they will tell you how long this bird is going to live a lot of times people too don't realize their diet is very very important they need what they would have if they were in the wild fresh fruits vegetables are good not seed mix but the biggest thing and the biggest complaint that i think i hear when people because i get phone calls all the time hey we have this bird we just can't care for the anymore or they have developed an allergy to it these guys are very very dusty and particularly the cockatoos but i'll rub just underneath them there and you can on my hand well that white powder it keeps them dry when they're in the wild but when you have that bird in your house believe me that powder gets everywhere so that's probably one of the main things that we try to stress to people that are thinking about getting birds good well they're absolutely adorable and rare i'm going to look forward to seeing them at the pet expo we'll have you back on a little bit with rocco and find out more about your bird knowledge thanks kenny sam i think you you can learn more about kenny's collection of birds at that guy at that guy with the birds dot com soon we will be bringing on rocco mana who will be talking about the pittsburgh pet expo thanks and see you after the sometimes it's hard to see where you're going to be you have the power to change your problems all it takes is your life your voice  know the last few years you know a lot of people bring their dogs because you can bring your pet on a leash which usually translates to a dog every once in a while you have somebody walk around the bird on their knacker you know snake in their hand yeah it doesn't work and you never know you know people bring their pets but you never know what they have at home they can have a fish tank they can have reptiles whatever but they bring their dogs so you know every year we get a lot of requests you know why don't you have more stuff for cats so the sure we do it works idea so it's a fully sanctioned tika cat show where just like you see on t v yeah different categories and lots of awards and pop and the whole the whole show yeah different categories different events throughout the entire festival throughout the entire event and it's like a festival is like a pet festival sure because there's vendors to cry and yeah yeah we have close to three hundred that manders selling stuff given stuff away launching educating you on new pet products up and coming products you know what the feed your what i hope your pets go to the bathroom if anything you can imagine is that this only traveling touch tank in the country to go to a lot of county fairs and other events like that but it's just like you know if you've ever been on vacation and gone to a big time zoo where they have a touch tank with sting rays and skates  the dog jumping dogs with the ones that jump in the dog jump in the pool for distance and water and we have dogs and races we have a jodi competitions we have a warning area this year that actually double in size of what we had last year so yeah no shortage of dog stuff at all and anything else that people can get involved in yeah as a matter of fact we're also going to have as part  of the vendors we have about thirty to forty rescue organizations that come down and they don't do on site adoptions but you can get the ball rolling you can sort of do a meet and greet with a pet you lie get the paperwork going you know different rescue organization has their own process if you will but you can get started on finding your new family pat at the grave and it's around halloween and you're going to be having a contest to hear yeah that's always very popular the pack cost you because a couple years ago we started doing it we really underestimated how poppy there it is you know the last couple of years we've been making it bigger and bigger and breaking it down by category because the one year it was actually on halloween weekend also we were unprepared for how many people common want to dress up their pets at this thing so now you know we have we have a good system in place it's a law works a lot better now but that's coming to the event this year i hear she's a big supporter of dogs and she has every year so yeah and she's she's really nice we'll talk to anybody she brings her two dogs with her and she's there on saturday this year saturday  there is a lot to do there it's always it's always shocking to me because i'm there the whole weekend from the time was up until the last vendor leave sunday night when it's all over you know the one year i was i was sitting by the door for whatever  reason you know sometimes you notice people come in with you know something about you know their pink shoes or this or that and you know three to three hours later i'd be sitting in another part of the you see that person again and you'd say wow you know it's a great thing there's there's enough for people to do to be here for three hours so there really is you know you can you can take a break watch some of the competitions the entertainment shot more family friendly yeah it's yeah it's great it makes me happy with what is the what is the most exotic pet you've seen there the ha you're sorry i mean her well you know we encourage people not to bring  you know comes to mind yeah no just we have we hope nothing crazy happens quite frankly we hope it's a nice safe of that nobody gets bit there's no accidents you know which are inevitable but yeah we giving away something or yeah they do it to get promotion if you go to health proxy buy ten dollars worth of dog food or anything really unhealthy to get two free tickets so that's that's a good degree yeah yeah and they'll be there on site they bring care of whatever people do so is there anything else that you know that we missed touch on that you want people to know about please calm it's a core value you know if you've ever been to you know a home show or  it's the same thing except most of the stuff related so and you can bring your pot which you know i know there's more and more places out there that are starting to be pet friendly but this is certainly one of all the dog babies and you know cat like i said people lose their we'll be bringing rocco back out here in a little it to do a bird talent a birds of a feather talons with kenny see which one is the best so many for your friends to see the pittsburgh pet expo to find out more please go to pittsburgh pet expo cared about and i'd be over thinking about what happened in iraq three months ago you're almost like a stranger when you come back everything is different to your kind of discombobulated people were asking me how it was but i got the sense dave couldn't relate to what i had been through so i just stopped talking about it it made a tremendous difference in my life when i chose to get help in hindsight it probably saved my life save my marriage i personally believe that i'm also a better soldier sometimes when you come home you can see negative distressing concern you can all be out soon will be got you're not going to be the same person afterwards that you were before you deployed and don't try to be accept who you are now figure out how to move forward and make that pos i always get a lot of comments not only for our stands and set up but as well as the other vendors in the area people always just say they had such a wonderful time great i'm sure love having  know last year as a first year kenny did it you know by himself and with his team without john and i mean i was blown away i mean constant people his area i ask him questions and he's so you know his bedside manner with the birds egg so i guess that's a world record allow for that ok i don't know whether i think it's a chicken i would hope so so the second question is how long do you think that it takes to hard boil ok all right this one's all about speed so how fast can a falcon swoop falcon falcon they're very fast very fast i want to say if i'm all right well that's the end of my challenge you guys did really well i think it's pretty much a draw tragedies and is there anything else you'd like to share about the pet expo coming up any final words please call yeah hags thank you to both kenny and rocco for being on the show and of course the byrds don't forget to follow spotlight on pittsburgh on facebook instagram and check out our website spotlight on pittsburgh dot com i will also be giving away a family four pack check back tomorrow i'll give the details on our facebook page to the pet expo and stay tuned for next time when we shine the spotlight on two more g