New girl with Severe macaw!! advice HUGELY appreciated!

[LinWinux]

Hi there. I joined this forum in order to answer you. I've had several parrots in the past 25 years, three of them Macaws. I currently have a severe Macaw that's 16 years old. She's a rescue that came out of a roach infested house with loud, rambunctious rednecks who smoked, cursed, and listened to loud music all day long. Advice is coming, just bear with me. Half of her feathers were missing too, because of her nervousness & anxiety. I'm mentioning these things to establish a background to my "Fearless" (that's her name) which caused her to be mean, loud, damaging to our surroundings, and a biter to anyone who'd come too close to her. We're not talking about nips, but rather deep gashes that took weeks to heal, blood everywhere, etc. She was out of control (no fault of her own) ...

A year after I got Fearless she is now inseparable from me. I can do anything with her ... bathe her (which she hates), ruffle her feathers, spread her wings apart, snatch her up quickly, flip her on her back, swing her on large hanging toys, get right in her face eyeball to eyeball, and so on. There's pretty much nothing that I can't do with her. She's warmed up to the rest of the family and will tolerate their presence near her. She also allows our teenage Son to pet her, now almost daily, for as long as a minute non-stop. So the bottom line is that the right treatment will turn just about any parrot into a wonderful, and often even family friendly pet ... if you're willing to work at.
That's the only trick there is.

A lot of people have parrots and never do anything with them except look at them. Exotic pets to be looked at. Other people have similar pets (birds) that have nothing at all in common with your specific pet type ... which is why it disconcerts me when people like that are so quick to offer advice. And worst of all, many people are afraid to properly discipline their pets which is a crying shame because that's actually the key ingredient when dealing with any living object that is able to mimic, memorize, inflict harm, inflict damage, and isn't intelligent enough to know how *NOT* to harm itself.

I have found that most parrots, just like children between the ages of 18 months and 6 years of age, will take blatant advantage of their human surroundings when they can. Parrots like to be vocal, just like most small children ... and your own vocal cords can often be your best friend. Don't be afraid to get loud & obnoxious with your bird if your bird behaves that way with you. Most birds prefer a fun and happy environment so when you behave out of place as the parrot is behaving, they're learning that their obnoxious behavior can be returned in kind ... thereby often causing the parrot to chill out. Discipline is the key to everything ... just like wild animals in a circus who are disciplined to do whatever the animal trainer wants.

No, by no means am I saying that a circus is a great place for animals to be treated fantastic. My point is that you can't achieve much of anything without discipline and if you're willing to instill discipline as needed when needed, you'll end up with one of the most amazing pets that you can ever dream of owning. If you're not the kind of person who can "get down and dirty" with your parrot then you should reconsider owning one. They are hands on pets, and severe MaCaws more than others for some strange reason. Today, my Fearless and I laugh, joke, play, and even cuddle together ... but it took a lot of discipline and work to get her there. When you raise a baby bird it's much much easier to get them used to proper behavior and their surroundings, but it can be really trying when you get an older adult, set in their ways, from a crappy environment.

Also like small children, parrots and especially severe MaCaws require a set amount of daily attention for a healthy & respectful relationship between it and it's owner. If you can't give your MaCaw a minimum of 1 hour per day, one on one, each and every day of the week, then you're not giving enough of yourself to this beautiful creature. Sure, we all have lives or jobs or families or other pets or a combination of these, but parrots are much more needy than most dogs or cats .. very much like small children. If you want your parrot *NOT* to be a biter, than don't give him or her a reason to be upset by ignoring its needs. Food and fresh water are all good, but parrots are also emotional, consequently requiring emotional satisfaction too, just like a human child. Luckily just an hour or so every day is often enough already.

Allow your severe MaCaw to interact with the family by keeping the cage where he or she will feel like she belongs. The cage for my Fearless is located close to a wall that's near the main hallway, next to the kitchen doorway, and directly in view of the living & diningroom. That makes her feel like she's always part of something. If she gets too excited and screams a lot (eardum damaging screams are nomal for MaCaws) then you can curb that as well. I keep one side of her cage covered because Fearless gets scared to death when we roll the vacuum cleaner down the hallway. I don't know about other types of parrots but MaCaws are usually very possessive of their homes (if they love their home i.e. cage), so much so in fact that's it's often quite possible to allow your MaCaw to come out in the morning ... and remaining out of the cage all day long until it's time to go to bed ... because a happy MaCaw will remain in their cage on their own without a problem. All three of my MaCaws wre like that, never leaving their cage even though they were perfectly capable of flying off the perch if they wanted to do that. If your MaCaw has a cage that's set up to keep it happy & busy, then it won't see much of a reason to leave. There are exceptions of course so you'll need to monitor your MaCaw's reaction to a cage that's left open.

Last but not least, just as you'd do with little kids, there are some parts of the home that should be parrot proofed. Try to keep live electrical cords away from its view so they don't generate an interest. Keep your MaCaw (other birds too) away from drafty areas which can cause a cold and possibly even death. Even when you're feeding yummy treats, make those treats healthy ones and not garbage food. Fat & Dairy products are bad for most parrots and some things like chocolate and most raw beans can even be deadly. If you feel the need to seek the advice of a vet, be willing to make phone calls and to drive distances in order to find an Avian vet who actually knows a little something about birds. Teach your MaCaw the words Stop or No because you'll need them often for disciplinary reasons. Your MaCaw will heed those words if he or she knows what they mean because of the consequences that follow when those words aren't abided by.
There, I think this post will give you plenty of food for thoughts & ideas.
I wish you the best of luck with your severe MaCaw. They make great best friends!

(I would have included photos but mine are all 900 px wide which is too big for this forum. Sorry)

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[LinWinux]

@Wolf and @mymartianheart

Yeah, my Fearless has almost zero interest in toys either ... unless I start goofing around with the toys first which then gets her jealousy going i.e. "Hey, what's he doing having fun with that while I'm not"
She loves empty vitamin bottles, with the lid, and a wooden bead inside.
That's how she gets her exercise ... chasing after it with me luring her ...

One thing that she loves to no end without anyone else being around, is clean cotton cloth. If I take an old clean cotton dish towel or a cotton t-shirt and bunch it up on top of her cage ... she'll come along and shred the dickens out of that thing every day until there's nothing left to shred. Every 10 days or so she gets another dish towel or a t-shirt. Thank you dollar stores and flea markets (lol).

Sometimes, not always but every now and then she'll go after her large hanging toys when I lay them on the couch to play with them. Once she latches on I can swing her (gently) in fairly large circles and her fun cajoling makes it obvious that she's having the time of her life. She has to be in the mood for that though.

She also likes to be tickled gently under her wings and if I make tickle tickle sounds while I'm doing that, she'll make tickle tickle sounds as well ... followed by laughing like a jester immediately afterwards ... he, he, he, he, he ...

After I had her for around 5 months she began stimulating herself daily, for up to 2 hours at a time. This went on for around 6 weeks during which she laid 5 eggs. The first one freaked me out because it also effected the consistency of her stool a great deal. A parrot's stool can tell you volumes about the health of your pet bird. So I took her to an avian vet with 20+ years of avian experience. He told me that there was at least one more egg that he could feel and possibly more than that to follow. Sure enough, 5 eggs altogether. She hasn't self-stimulated like that since then and she hasn't laid any more eggs either.

I don't clip her wings (first parrot that I've stopped doing that on), but I do clip her nails which can get to be painful when they're long, sharp, and pointy like a needle. The first time was a total fiasco with neither one of us being pleased about the other's behavior ... but then I tried something that worked wonders. Since she always wants to be part of anything that I do whenever she can, I started cutting my own finger and toe nails directly in her sight which made her curious as can be as to what on earth I'm doing. She sees the clippers and she sees me using them on myself. Then I get her, flip her on her back, and make a game out of cutting her nails with loving noises and a big "Yay, it's a party" (something to that effect anyway) when the nail is actually clipped, followed by a gentle hug and some quick kisses. She's still not thrilled about the clipping, but it's so much easier and more acceptable when it's a game that we're playing together ...
(Hah, reverse psychology, turning trauma into lovable wonder)

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[LinWinux]

There are only two reasons why beaks need to be trimmed and two reasons alone, regardless of what other people on the net would tell you: liver malfunction or deformity. Period.

I don't know if it was a birth defect or from the abusive environment that she used to be in, but my severe Macaw has quite a deformed beak too. This makes shredding anything very easy but it inhibits the seeding with various large bird foods. I feed her a mix of pellets and natural foods. 1/3 pellets and 2/3 natural seeds with fruits & veggies. Because of her beak I put her on a medium to large food diet that I modify for her. It takes me about 3 hours once every 10 - 12 weeks to do that ... making stuff that's too large smaller ... but if I didn't she'd lose a lot of her food all over the floor and neither one of us would be happy. I do agree that a beak should only be trimmed when it physically inhibits the actual lifestyle of the bird. You wouldn't amputate your leg either, just because you had a severe limp, right?

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