Welcome to Elaine Whitwam's website. We handraise beautiful, tame baby macaw's, cockatoos,  conure's and lorikeets. All the babies are fed by spoon and are weaned and socialised near their parents. Some are raised from egg and some are parent hatched and hand raised from pinning stage. Some of the specias are better suited for pets but most of my babies are very tame due to constant loving and handling. All the babies are surgically sexed and any health certificates or microchips can be arranged but are not included in the prices of the babies.

I have been breeding birds since 1985  and I really enjoy the different personalities of our birds. I sell birds throughout South Africa and also export to other countries. If you have any queries, please contact us. Our website will be updated regularly and we hope you find it both informative and helpful. For a complete description of each of our birds as well as some useful information and recommended web resources, simply follow the links. If you would like to reserve a baby or require any additional information , please email or telephone us.

 Highcroft Aviaries is offering a course in Basic Parrot Bird Keeping. The aviaries are situated in Kwa-Zulu Natal, South Africa.This course is unique in that all participants are actually working with the birds and not learning from a book. The new courses for 2011 are 1 week courses and involve working in our aviaries with our birds, learning the following skills: Basic knowledge on the characteristics of our bird types, e.g. Macaws, Cockatoos, Conures, etc, how to handle a bird, what foods to feed, how to train your bird, how to incubate eggs, how to hand raise birds until weaning and the basics of medicating a bird. Lecture notes are provided. We will also visit other bird breeding establishments to see alternate methods. Cost including accommodation, food, lectures and transport from King Shaka International airport for the 1 week period R6 000. For people wishing to travel daily, cost R4 300 (includes lunches and teas). All participants will be able to re-do the course at a cost of R3 000 for accommodation only if they wish to revise what they have learnt. Subject to availability. Course limited to a maximum of 5 people. Cost excludes air tickets. Course dates: 19-25th June 2011,24-30thJuly,21-27thAugust and 18-24th September 2011. Participants should arrive one day ahead to settle in. For overseas students we are busy with our breeding and therefore there is a lot to see and learn. Contact Elaine on (+27) 82 337 7702 - This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it  

*******  NEWS FLASH**********

HIGHCROFT AVIARIES.

Over the last 35 years, I have both enjoyed and become frustrated with bird breeding. I have always wanted the best for the beautiful creatures I have the honour of working with and it always seems difficult to pinpoint the exact conditions that birds in captivity will thrive and breed in.

About 10 years ago I started making my own Lorikeet nectar based on a very simple recipe of Pronutro and syrup. To this I have always added the nutritional side like Soluble multi vitamins, minerals, bacitracin and others.

I realized some years later, that the Lorikeets breed prolifically every year and I decided to try this same additive on the other parrots in my collection besides Lorikeets. The results in 4-6months, definitely seems to indicate that the fertility in all the birds has increased. There are a lot of other factors to take into account, like rain and heat and removing monkeys etc. But in comparison to the other breeders in the immediate area, my breeding has increased almost 6 times. Batches of 5 eggs, where only 2 out of 5 may have been fertile before, now 5 out of 5 are fertile. Birds that have not bred for 5 years are starting to give me babies again and Macaws that have not bred for the last 10 years, have given me babies this year. I think this additive which is used by humans to increase fertility, by stock farmers for increase in health and fertility, has a dual effect. It improves the health of the bird and the next result is that a healthy bird, if at breeding age, will be more fertile. We also market this product as ‘HIGHCROFT PERKY PARROT’. It is a health product and not an allopathic fertility fixer or drug.

HIGHCROFT LIVER CLEANSE is an excellent liver cleanse and I am finding that I use it often for birds that appear to battle with digestion, are swollen at the rear, have a problem with fatty hearts and liver or seem to need a boost to their system. When a few Blue Throated Macaws died of fatty hearts, I immediately put the whole flock onto this product. At the same time I made sure that there were no fats in their diet. We are marketing the powder and instructions can be found on the bottle.