Kitten Conditioning to Accept Birds

Question
My daughter wants to purchase a Russian Blue kitten.  We have multiple birds in our household.  While the kitten would not be living in the same room as them, per se, I would like information on how to desensitize a kitten to the presence of birds (I KNOW! this is a tough one!) as I did successfully do this with our recently deceased cat.  The breeders want to hold onto the kitten until it is ten to twelve weeks of age; my knee jerk reaction to this is that it's too old.  I'm wondering what you think about the age issue: is a six week old kitten easier to socialize toward what is normally a prey animal than a 12 week old kitten?  Also, any tips on using a negative reinforcer (such as a sound device) to help the kitten to learn to ignore its primary prey drive would be appreciated.

Answer
Sierra,

12 weeks is the ideal age for the kitten. The mother weans the kitten at 8 weeks and the time between 8 weeks and 12 weeks is when the mother cat teaches the kitten about life, litterbox, etc. The kitten will be more well adjusted because of it. As long as the breeder is spending at least 5 minutes a day with the kitten it will be sociable.

Some cats will be fine with birds, others will always see them as prey. I am including a link to a good article about cats and pet birds:
http://www.birdsnways.com/wisdom/ww13evi.htm

Tabbi