can it be done?

birdbrainzz4me

birdbrainzz4me

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former m&f si Eclectus
so i have been doing research and catching up on all the wonderful macaw stories on the forums. and one thing that i have been wondering about is if i adopt an older macaw and it is a bird that likes only women, is there any chances with dedication, that it would come to like men as well? or if it was a one person bird is there any way that it could become more social to others. or am i better off getting a baby and raising it so that it is comfortable around men women and children and not just a one person bird.
 
IMO There's just no way of knowing either way. We raised our 2 Zons and they are totally dedicated to the wife, ReaRea (Green Wing) is bonded to me but is easily handled by the wife as well. Miri (Green Wing) is NOTHING like ReaRea and has the same parents just a different clutch. Lain (Hahn's) was devoted to the wife up until recently and now prefers me.
 
alrighty then. another quick question .... what does imo stand for? im not very savy when it comes to the texting lingo i know a few but that one i don't. and how about your son? i think he's your son in the christmas pictures with the x box game. does he interact with the birds as well. and if so how do the birds react to him? my male eclectus i could hand to any one and he was totally fine with it. i could do almost anything with that bird and he wouldn't care most the time.
 
IMO=in my opinion

Yes that's our son, he doesn't much but he can pet ReaRea at any time. I've also seen BOTH the Zon's land on him when he was doing homework in the living room, this has happened quite a few times. He can come and go as he pleases around any of them when they're loose but I wouldn't trust Miri on him at all. He'd interact more with them but their claws on him really bothers him. He's gotten to where he ducks REALLY fast when he hears wings flapping LOL
 
lol has he wanted a bird of his own? or is rearea, miri the zons and the hans good enough for him. ........knowing that you had gotten rearea at an early age do you mind me asking how old she was when you got her? i know you finished hand feeding her, i was kinda curious if maybe i found a breeder that would let me do the same. i know they would have to trust me in that area, i believe it took almost a year to wean the ekkies. even after they were weaned they still liked to have some mush meal occasionally. which was fine with me i think that part is fun!:D i love feeding baby birds.
 
If you know how to train a parrot, then yes, a "one person bird" that "prefers one sex" can be taught to go to anyone.

My mitred conure is supposedly a one person bird who prefers men, after all, he was owned by one man for 10 years of his life. Charlie lived in a pet store for about a year where he did bond with a young girl, then in a foster home for a year where he bonded with both humans. He's now been with me for 6 years (making him 18, going on 19). I'm most definitely not male, and he's quite bonded to me! I can't say I've noticed him to prefer one sex over another, nor have I noticed him to be a 'one person bird' - he simply doesn't like strangers all that much! He takes a while to warm up to new people, and it's a matter of people frequently interacting with him over a few weeks. If he doesn't like someone, he wont take food from them, even if it's the same thing I'm eating, and because I'm eating it, he wants some. (he always wants what I'm eating! even if he doesn't like it! LOL) However, people he does like, he will take food from willingly. He may not care what they are eating, but if he is offered it, he will take it and eat it.
 
They were all hand raised by us except Lani, no, I think we got more than enough birds for his liking, he's gonna end up with all of them as it is. :eek:
We don't necessarily "train" ours, we're not much on socializing with people (other than online). Maybe why our doormat says "Go Away"??:D We already picked out a sign for the porch as well. (Let's just say it ain't very "inviting" to people :54:) Search for a thread about me raising ReaRea, it has pics with dates/age on it.

Also keep in mind my breeder taught me how to handfeed, you could actually kill them if done improperly. She made me (and the wife) handfeed each of the ones we raised before being able to take them home with us. I was lucky, I worked very close to home and was able to come home at lunchtime to feed them back then.
 
LOL...You ain't seen that one yet??
 
thank you monicamc! that eases my mind on the adopting an older macaw option.
and warfrat, i know what you're talking about being antisocial. im not much of a people person either except for online. but i do love my family dearly and it is important to me for my bird to get along with them as well. and i know , feeding baby birds is a very careful process. my grandma used to breed birds. but they were all the small types like bourkes and cockatiels, parrotlets. she wasn't fond of the larger birds. plus i used to work for a bird breeder helping her clean and occasionally help feed some of the babies. i think what she told me is you got to make sure the tube goes in the crop , the easiest way was to let the baby guide it down. i hand fed a few clutches of cockatiels my mom was breeding also. she had like three or four clutches and when one wanted food they all were screaming for it. so i would lend a helping hand so every body got their food and didn't have to wait as long. there was the occasional stubborn one that didn't want to take the tube, so i know that then takes a special hand at making sure it goes down the right throat hole. don't want anybody drowning from the mush meal. plus it has to be the right temp not too cold and not hot either to were they can get scalded. i always did the lip test. i took a spoon and put my lip to it to see how warm the food was. i hope i'm not missing anything, this is all that i can remember. please let me know if i am missing something there. or if i was doing something wrong. i just did it the way they taught me.
 
My green cheek conure, Peta was 5 1/2 yrs. old when she was given to me. The lady I got her from said she hated men, especially her ex-husband. From day one with us Peta has readily accepted my hubby with no problems.

Roscoe, my youngest Catalina macaw was 5 months old when I brought him home. He has been around my hubby everyday since he got here. He knows hubby lives here & his play perch sits between my computer table & hubby's. Roscoe will take food from hubby, but he will not allow him to pick him up. He will on rare occasions get on hubby's arm if I hold him & tell him to step up. He clearly does not like to and will not stay on his arm for very long before he starts nipping hubby. Granted, hubby does not have experience with parrots and probably does not give Roscoe a secure feeling when he holds him.

They truly all have different ideas of who they decide to bond with. Like others have said, it is hard to know in advance how any one bird will react til they are settled in & feeling secure in their new home. As far as how they react with strangers, I too do not have people over. Since coming to my home, the boys have only seen strangers once in my house in the time I have owned them. They were very quiet & kept to the back of their aviary as if they were afraid these strange humans were there to steal them away.
 
i am wondering if it is some vibe that some men give off. i am finding more birds that are being rehomed clinging to women over men. i am sure there is no statistics about this, but it's just how it seems to me when i am looking. i talk to my fiancee frequently about when WE get the baby, i say we that way because he needs to know that he's going to be just as involved in this birds life as i am. the only birds he's had as a child were cockatiels and parakeets. but when i had the ekkies, i don't think he quite knew how to handle a bird of that caliber. for me they were a piece of cake, he's not as experience as i am so i will have to teach him the ways of a flock leader. unfortunately one thing he was good at, was teaching my female ekkie how to say the F word. i could have kicked his butt for that one. and it only took a half a day. i kid you not, i went to work one day and it was just around the corner from our house so i came home on lunch breaks. so that one day i walk through the door and the first thing i heard out of darlah's beak was F YOU! i think the sh*% was gonna hit the fan. so needless to say i have to work on the fiancee too. i asked him why he taught her that, and his response was she wouldn't stop screaming. needless to say, he didn't realize she saw some one was home sitting on their butt playing the playstation and didn't even bother to let her out of the cage so she could hang out with him. that told me exactly why she didn't be quiet. i know my ekkies were very quiet, the only time they ever squawked was when some one was walking up to the door, they picked that up from the dogs barking so they figured they needed to squawk along with them. but that was when we were around 19 and he has grown up since then. so im sure he will put on the daddy pants and be a part of this gw's life as well. when ever i talk to him about how wonderful every body has been on the forums and how excited i am to be having one, i can see the happiness in his face because of how happy and excited i am.
 
birdbrainzz4me said:
unfortunately one thing he was good at, was teaching my female ekkie how to say the F word. i could have kicked his butt for that one. and it only took a half a day. i kid you not, i went to work one day and it was just around the corner from our house so i came home on lunch breaks. so that one day i walk through the door and the first thing i heard out of darlah's beak was F YOU! i think the sh*% was gonna hit the fan. so needless to say i have to work on the fiancee too. i asked him why he taught her that, and his response was she wouldn't stop screaming. needless to say, he didn't realize she saw some one was home sitting on their butt playing the playstation and didn't even bother to let her out of the cage so she could hang out with him.
Click to expand...
Please be sure to ingrain in your boyfriend that one can potentially destroy a bird's future by teaching it to repeat profanity. If such a bird ever requires re-homing, many potential new owners may pass on adopting that bird based largely upon its offensive vocabulary. Or they may return the bird (or otherwise part with it) soon after discovering the objectionable things it's inclined to say. A bird who utters profanity may be passed from person to person or spend much of its remaining life at a rescue facility. It may thus even pass away (from stress) far before it should. And it's worth noting that even when we intend to keep our birds forever, we can never control what the future may hold. So please be mindful and get your boyfriend straightened out before you acquire your next parrot. My point here is purely intended as helpful advice :).
 
trust me , i do plan on cleaning his potty mouth up. i never knew though that something like that really affects them getting adopted if had to be surrendered, or re homed. that's just terrible. why don't people realize they could teach them to say something different. i'm sure it can be done. but yes i'm definitely nipping that in the butt.
 
It can affect them in a big way. When I went to get Peta, my green cheek conure from the lady who was giving her to me, she said I almost had an African Grey free too. It seems her pastor's wife was ready to get rid of the Grey they had gotten as an adult bird just because it cussed up a storm. They loved the bird, but not its mouth & when they had company over she was embarrassed by the Grey. I didn't end up with the bird, so I hope they figured out how to live with its choice of vocabulary.Would be a shame to uproot this bird again just because it was taught colorful language by its human flock. By the way, its language would not have bothered me one bit had they decided to re-home it to me.
 
huh! well i just learned something new. it's very unfortunate that, that happens. i would have never known that. see it's a good thing i joined this forum. well i can tell you this, i am going to make sure that we will be on our best behavior. i cannot lie, sometimes i do have a slip here and there when the occasion arises. we just gotta keep in mind just because it's a bird, they are still alot like toddlers.
 
birdbrainzz4me said:
just because it's a bird, they are still alot like toddlers.
Click to expand...
That's so very true! As with Turquoise, I would have no problem taking in a bird with foul words or phrases in its vocabulary. Personally, profanity doesn't bother me in the slightest. But there are plenty of folks who have a problem with it that would otherwise be capable of providing good homes for secondhand birds. It's always good to keep that reality in mind :).
 
bless you that can look past a fowl mouthed parrot. i could do the same as well. and see them for what they really are and not just a potty mouth. :)
 
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