Man, I get sick for a few days and come back to find the place on fire. Entertaining.
Hyacinth macaws are endangered, and their monetary value isn’t helping. It just encourages poaching. What they need is habitat protection in the wild, which is very expensive and altruist - because the reward is in the knowledge, not the pleasure of having the birds in person.
If you have in fact created several successful businesses, you likely understand the value of planning ahead - not just to figure out your strengths, but also the threats and risks.
1. You created and sold multiple businesses, as opposed to creating a single business that you grew to hugosity. Red flag. I made a good life for myself working in things that interested me. I liked to figure out something complex, but once the thing was running smoothly I lost interest. Couldn’t wait to hand it over to someone who wanted a sure thing and go find a new interesting challenge. Great personality trait for technical stuff. For parrots? Not so much. Parrots are like children who never grow up. They get to that stage where they interact, destroy the furniture, make huge messes, scream and have tantrums, need constant attention and supervision - and never get past that. What’s going to happen in ten years? When you are ready for something new? You won’t be able to sell your established aviary for an order of magnitude profit. You will likely lose money overall. If you haven’t ever stuck with something for 20 years, you know you aren’t likely to stick with this either. That’s ok when you are dealing with software, or lawn care, or fish that don’t bond to you, or dogs that easily bond to new packs, or kids that grow up.
2. It’s a lot harder to find a “sitter” for large parrots than for kids. You can’t just go off for the weekend and leave them home alone. Can’t say how many nightmares I’ve read on this site alone, of parrots who got a toe caught in a cage or a rope and either died or lost a toe or foot. You almost need someone who will come stay onsite and care for them. Are you comfortable with that? How will you arrange a two week trip to Hawaii, or a longer trip? How will you find and train these sitters? They must know parrots well enough to notice the subtle early signs of illness, be able to provide emergency care, and be aware of the myriad hazards to parrots that are not hazards to most living beings.
3. Parrots don’t do well around high energy people. They prefer people who move slowly, speak quietly, act calmly. They don’t obey. You can ask a parrot to step up, and teach them to step up reliably, but only if YOU adapt to their style. Parrots aren’t domesticated and have no innate desire to please you. They are more likely to bite if they feel threatened - and a hyacinth has the biggest, baddest bite of any animal. Google this. You can’t punish them for biting the way you can discipline a dog. If a hy takes your finger off, can you deal with that calmly? Put the bird back in the cage, locate the detached digit, ice it and get to the emergency room? What if the finger belongs to one of your kids? Yes, we call them “gentle giants” but they can and do bite. They can get bossy and decide they are in charge.
4. Lastly, really think of your goal here. If it is to make money raising beautiful animals, think hard. Hopefully you will grow to love them, and exercise diligence in finding good homes for the babies. You should know that even an expensive bird like this can be too much for some, and the birds will wind up in a rescue in the BEST case. In the worst case the expensive bird gets relocated to a basement or back room where it can’t be heard screaming in loneliness. Macaws live a long time, and by the time someone can afford to buy one the macaw will likely outlive the human and wind up at the mercy of strangers. Either you will care deeply about the birds in your care, and work diligently to ensure they have good lives, or you are mostly in it for the money and sell to anyone who can pay regardless of the quality of life for the parrot.
5. What if your family starts to hate the birds? Get tired of the screaming, afraid of the biting, fed up with not being able to travel? So many threads on this site of ultimatums from spouses and families.
My personal view is that breeding parrots in captivity is wrong. It does nothing to improve the genetic stock. It does nothing to preserve habitat. It only makes parrots seem like desirable pets which leads to more poaching and habitat destruction. It makes a living thing into a status symbol. It causes parrots to suffer. Even the best life for a captive parrot is a poor substitute for life in a natural flock. Humans are going to destroy parrots in the wild the way we are destroying elephants and rhinos in the wild.
Since you are in the research phase, pick up a copy of “Of Parrots And People” by Tweety. Amazing stories about parrots - their intellectual feats, acts of genius, and also the ways they suffer at human hands. The last part is macaws in the wild - Spix’s and Lear’s - and the effort to protect and restore their native habitats to allow them to continue to live in the world they evolved in.
