Hi everyone!

[Rana]

Hi everyone,

I'm a long time parrot owner but I am facing a bit of an issue since the last two days and i'd love to get a few different views/advice on how you'd approach this kind of situation...

My household consists of myself, my smarter half (human) a very demanding and spoiled 2 year old male pinapple GCC, a 14 year old rescued hahns macaw lady, and since 2 days ago, a 6 month old GCC (sex unknown so far).

the baby GCC was given to us by our breeder (long time good relationship with this man).
apparently this little baby was quite agressive to people and he had a hard time selling it.
It had been handreared, declared healthy - and i had it falling asleep giving him scratches and stepping up on my hand without any issue or sign of agressive behavior. On this note the breeder asked us if we wanted to take him home.
Knowing it would go to a good home, he said to take him for a few weeks, see how we get on and decided then if we could keep him or not, no money asked. because it would be better off than sitting in a cage on his own with no interaction. My other half agreed to my impulsive nature on the terms that we would have to house him together with our other gcc.

now here lies my issue... my other birds have seperate cages, and eventhough they tollerate eachother, they don't particulary like eachother.
the new bird adores our older gcc, we asume he's used to having been with other gcc's and he keeps trying to go and cuddle with him but the older one isn't used to cuddling with other birds and flies off whenever the new baby comes near him. but there are no signs of agression, and i only let them near eachother when i'm supervising.
How would you suggest going about getting them used to eachother and eventually have them share a cage? I was thinking to put them together for 5 minutes or so every evening and progressively lengthen the time? but 'm not sure if that's the right way to go about it...

I would love your help/advice/experience?
thanks for reading the very long post!! (sorry!! - nice to meet you all i don't usually post this long)

Kind regards,
Rana

[Pajarita]

Nope. You can't put two birds together if one of them is not receptive to the idea, especially if this one is the larger and older one. You might think that supervision will suffice but it doesn't (they are much faster with their beaks than we could ever be in getting there to prevent damage).

You will have to wait until your older GCC wants to interact with the baby. It won't happen until this baby is sexually mature and it might not happen at all if you have two males.

I appreciate your trying to do a kindness to the poor baby that other (stupid) people rejected but I don't agree with trial periods for parrots. It's not fair to them and, when things don't work out, they are extremely stressed out and often heartbroken when sent back. With a parrot, you either make the commitment or you don't. I don't mean to criticize, judge you or be harsh with my comments but parrots imprint and bond, especially babies, and separating a baby from first the parents, second the breeder and then a third set of 'parents' seems terribly cruel to me. This is the type of thing that can mess up a bird's psyche for life so, please, seriously consider keeping this baby even if you cannot put him in the same cage with the other one.