Being a caretaker for a cockatoo is an enormous responsibility, one that can span decades and generations. Tragically — sometimes after a long and happy life — a cockatoo’s caretaker can become suddenly unable to care for the bird. The factors that can render a caretaker no longer available can be death, illness, loss of shelter, financial hardship, or any number of other circumstances, but the impact on the cockatoo is an emergency need for a safe place to be, with new caretakers. This program was created for the purpose of building a strong, supportive community of cockatoo people to help make sure that cockatoos do not end up in harmful situations, and to help caretakers develop plans for their birds long before an emergency rehoming has to happen.
The core idea behind 4the2s, is to help people establish succession plans for their cockatoos. The basic idea is that a person (or persons) agrees to become the caretaker for the bird if the current caretaker is no longer able to do so, whether that be the result of death or any other incapacitating circumstance. The main goal is to establish these relationships well before a change needs to be made. This allows for the current caretaker and future caretaker to get to know each other, and in ideal circumstances, for the future caretaker and the cockatoo to get to know one another and become comfortable while the bird is in its current home. We strongly encourage regular visits to help build relationships.
But the scope of our program extends further, recognizing other ways that strong communities can support people and cockatoos. We also want to help people find temporary foster care for their birds, boarding or in-home care for their cockatoos, and non-emergency rehoming. Additionally, we recognized that while cockatoos can live for many decades, their histories often do not accompany them. So we also want to use this platform to record caretaker histories for individual birds, to the extent they are known.
This program is not intended as a general communication platform since there are already excellent and well-established online discussion forums, although people are welcome to use it for discussions about anything cockatoo related.
