Hello From Boulder, CO

[Pajarita]

No, Liz, this bird was DNA'd a male.

[RaptorMascara]

His band says," C&D 4" I took him to the vet last week and asked about it and they said that some states aren't required by law to include the year number and that some breeders will get bands with no year as a result. That means my dear Victor's age is to remain a bit of a mystery!

I also asked about him being a "hot species" and they said, Yep, Amazons will occasionally get overly territorial and aggressive. But they also said that if Victor isn't doing that at this point in time then there isn't really anything to modify or change and if and when that does happen, diet and schedule modifications can be looked at but otherwise not to worry about it. So we're not. Thanks so much to everyone for the information, you encouraged me to learn more about my parrot and to bring my questions to his vet! Other than that they said that he's a healthy giant Amazon which we're all very happy about!

[Pajarita]

So their solution is "Wait until the bird is overly hormonal and in pain and then and only then do something about it"? That's a new one to me! But I think they would change their tune if they had been the recipient of a hormonal male amazon aggression, as I have. I am, right now, walking around with a hole in my head from an attack by one - and he is not even hormonal, he was just protecting his female!

I strongly recommend you think about this more carefully and do more research on how their reproductive system works because it's different from mammals - with birds, the gonads grow only when there is production of sexual hormones so keeping them to a 'summer' solar schedule all year round means sexual organs that grow so large that they actually displace other organs - which translates into chronic pain.