Tips on helping a Plucked Blue and Gold Macaw

[lwis]

I fell in love with this Blue and Gold macaw. Her name is Reno and she is a plucker. Aside from her head, tail and parts of her wings; she is bare. Right now she is sitting in a bird supply store down the street. This store also takes in and rehomes birds. I was told that in Reno's previous home, she was around a lot of kids and when the kids left the house she became sad and began to pluck her feathers. She has now also developed aggression and fear to most people and will lunge at nearly everyone who goes near her cage. When I went into the store and went up to the cage of this beautiful girl, the staff were amazed when Reno came down from her perch and put her head up to the bars for me to pet her. She will talk and sing to me, and will let me touch her almost anywhere. The staff had told me that they are planning on selling her when they can get her to be "nicer", but the problem is that none of the staff can get anywhere near her; plus, as an employee, they do not have enough time to spend just working with Reno.
If I was in the right place in my life I would buy her in a heartbeat, but I simply cannot adopt her right now; it would be unfair to her as well as myself and the people we currently live with. So I offered to come by the store two or three times a week to try and socialize Reno and attempt to trick train her so that someone else can take her home. I have spent two days with her so far (3 hours each time) and I nearly have her stepping up, but she won't yet put all her weight on me. It also seems that the environment is not the best for training, as she is in a relatively small space with dozens of other birds so it is quite loud.
Basically, I want to know, given the limited time and space that we have to work with, do I have any hope in resolving her behaviour issues so that she can be more easily adopted out? It seems unlikely that many people would want to take home an aggressive bird with a bad plucking problem.
I just want so badly to help her, because I know that with some work Reno could be an amazing companion.
Any input on this would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you everyone for your time.

[Michael]

I don't know if you can necessarily solve any of the issues but you can certainly make a step in the right direction. Hey, it's a win/win because you get to enjoy the bird temporarily, the bird gets quality out of cage time, and the future owner will have a better chance at handling it. The biggest challenge in training a bird in a store/rescue is that nothing is under your control except the direct interaction. This is still significant but much more difficult. You can't control how much food it gets, when it gets it, how much time it spends out, distractions, and worst of all other people who are teaching the parrot against you (like leaving it alone when it bites). It's still worth a shot and can't hurt. Just make sure you don't overbond with the bird or let it overbond with you. If you get to a stage where it is reliably stepping up on you, purposefully have it step up on others too so the bird doesn't learn just to step up for you but for any human.

Here's how I taught an overkept Jardine's Parrot to step up at the store.