MACAWS AS COMPANIONS
Part 3: The Critical First Six Weeks

© Copyright 1997, All rights reserved.

By Joanne Abramson
Reprinted from The Pet Bird Report

Once you bring your new bird home there are a few simple things that will enhance both or your lives. Undoubtedly you will be very excited. Try to remember that the bird is also excited and perhaps a bit scared about his new surroundings. Give him a chance to get to know you for a few days before inviting friends over to meet him. Let him get to know the family he is going to be living with first. With proper care macaws will live for decades. Do not feel that you have to rush into things too quickly. You will have time to teach the new bird to talk, do tricks, and learn about the human and bird social relationship.

Young Birds:

Baby birds (just like human babies) spend much of their time sleeping. Even a weaned macaw is still essentially a baby. Frequent naps are necessary during the daylight hours. If you are gone during the day, your new macaw might sleep quite a lot in order to be awake when you are home. The initial few weeks are crucial to their initiation into your home. This is the period where your new bird will start to bond to you and your family. If you are single and rarely have company, this is the world to which your macaw will adjust. If your home is commonly filled with people, that is what the bird will get used to. If there is normally lots of activity in your home make sure that one or two people are assigned to insure that your bird’s nutritional and emotional needs are satisfied. Try and make this time as stress free as possible. Give your bird time to learn from you what you except of him.

Macaws are extremely adaptable creatures. Young birds are very accepting of a change in location as long as they are given attention and gradually introduced to new experiences. Don’t ignore your new macaw. They will want to be part of your family immediately. They appreciate joining you while you are watching television and may even climb off their cage to go find you in the house.

Cage Location:

Make sure his cage is located in an area with at least one wall behind it where people cannot walk around. Stand where the birds cage will be and ask yourself if this is where you would want to be located. What can you see from this spot? Remember that the bird is unable to move his cage or himself when he is in the cage to another position in the house. He is a prisoner of where you put him. Is it noisy, cold , hot, isolated, too busy?? Can he see the families activities without being in the center of the room?

Daily Contact:

Make sure you provide at least twice daily contact with your bird. Ideally, if you are at work all day, time should be spent with him in the morning and the evening. For those that have their work at home, set aside time for the bird and you to play together. Birds, just like dogs, do not become well trained by being caged all day. They are trained to be great pets by being handled and played with on a daily basis. If you are not willing to provide daily quality time with your bird, find him a new home, or better yet, never get a parrot. Your daily contact is the single most important aspect of your people-parrot relationship.

Good Nutrition:

Make sure you are providing a high quality diet for your bird. Most macaws in the wild eat a fruit, nut, and seed diet. Some, such as the Hyacinth Macaw eat exclusively nuts but need a more varied diet in captivity. Provide your bird with the appropriate basic diet that should include soft foods (fruits and vegetables) seeds, nuts, legumes, and sprouts. Additionally human foods such as cooked pasta, can be provided in moderation. Pellets can also be added to the diet for variety. We feed whatever is fresh and in season. Almonds are beneficial to feed during molting since they provide much needed calcium for feather regrowth.

Toys:

A vital part of your macaw’s life is toys. Do not deprive him of toys. Your macaw is an intelligent, wonderful, growing animal. Toys relieve boredom and keep him healthy and happy. There is a wide assortment of toys commercially available. Many simple toys are readily available to you in your own home as supplement to commercial toys. Old wooden cooking spoons, empty toilet paper rolls, twigs, pine cones, two to three inch cleaned hard rocks, and unpainted tinker toys are a few of the many things you can try.

Get a variety of toys. Wood toys are vital to your bird’s "beak" health. The "beak" is made up of the upper and lower mandible. The beak is a vital tool for opening nuts (see figure below) and seeds which is what a macaw eats in the wild. I especially like wood toys that incorporate one to two inch lava rocks into their design. These lava rocks are perfect for the birds to file their lower chisel-like mandible to keep it in top working condition. (Most quality toys now contain safer lava rock that is not razor sharp but check before buying the toy.) High impact plastic and/or acrylic toys are easy to clean and some of the newer forms will last for years. But plastic toys should not be the only toys provided. (Make sure plastic toys are of a material that is intended for large birds and will not shatter when chewed. Rubber toys can be fine as long as the bird is not chewing and ingesting the pieces.)

Also, do not put so many toys in the cage. I have seen cages where there were so many toys the birds could hardly maneuver. Try rotating the toys so that the bird has variety. Please some of the toys outside of the birds cage as well as on a play gym or branch stand.

Behavior:

Young macaws will start testing their new owners once they settle in. This is good as it lets the new owner know that the bird is secure in his new environment and ready to test his boundaries. As with human children, macaws try to see how far you will go. This is a normal part of a young macaws development. Your job as the new owner is to guide the bird to what you want it to do and make it as easy as possible for him to learn his boundaries. Most important is to make rules that you want him to follow and be consistent in requiring him to follow them. You must let him know you are the head of the flock and you are setting the rules. Be as strong as you need to be without being aggressive to make your point, remembering that he is only a baby.

The Companion Bird:

If your bird spends the majority of the day alone, it may be helpful for his emotional well being to have another bird to relate with when you’re absent. It can be wonderful to watch two birds preen and play together. If you have no plans to breed macaws, consider getting a companion bird of the same sex. This will require more time on your part to keep both birds as well-trained pet birds. (Ed. Note: It is often more difficult to keep two macaws tame if they are living together. If continued pet potential is desired from two macaws who relate to each other daily, it will be essential for owners to establish and maintain a strong nurturing guidance. Each bird must be given consistent focused individual attention plus time together with the people in their lives.)

Macaws in the wild spend their lives in flocks with their own species. Sometimes several macaw species even share habitats. A Blue and Gold might see Green-wingeds or Scarlets daily depending on where they are living in the wild. Certainly they see other types of birds, mammals and reptiles as well. Macaws need the social interaction of people or other birds.

Check List For The First Six Weeks:

1. Provide a safe environment for your bird. Make sure that his is not exposed to abusive (i.e. people pulling his tail or handling him aggressively) or dangerous situations (i.e. electrical cords, deadly fumes from Teflon cookware, dog bites, etc.).
2. Provide a stress free environment. Make sure someone is in charge of the birds daily care. Place the cage away from direct exposure to heat or air ducts, loud noises, and front entries. Plan on at least twice daily contact with your bird.
3. Provide a nutritious diet. Learn as much as you can about the nutritional needs of the species of macaw and provide them.
4. Provide toys and chewing objects for stimulation. Macaws need toys to play with to keep them happy during the time you are unavailable to play with them.
5. Plan to set aside at least two hours a day for your new bird.

The Owner’s Responsibility:

Some owners who have had a bird for less than six months become unhappy with the progress they make with their birds to the point that they sometimes believe they have been sold a "bad bird." This is almost never the case. Usually the owner has had unrealistic expectations about the commitment of time necessary for a successful relationship with a parrot.

Each person considering adding a parrot to their lives should understand the seriousness of the commitment. This is not a short term relationship such as you might have with a dog or a cat which will live 12-15 years. This is a bird capable of living for many decades. Serious potential owners should do their research to ascertain if a macaw is really for them. Macaws will not be happy spending decades living in a prison of a cage. They need and deserve human or other bird contact on a daily basis to be happy. As responsible humans, it is up to us to provide that social contact.

Portions of this article are from the book "The Large Macaws: Their Care, Breeding, and Conservation."