Questions while patiently waiting....

[tfw]

So we are still waiting on our baby. He's still being weaned. We do get updates from the breeder. We are in no rush. In the meantime, between prepping toys, cages, "bird proofing" the whole house as best we can, I've been doing a lot of reading.

So one thing is with bedtime. I decided I didn't want to cover the cage. The cage is in the main floor in the living room that gets lots of activity. How do we know when a good bedtime is? There are 5 of us in the house. Usually by around 9, things settle down but usually one or two of us will still be up and hanging around the main floor. Should we get some sort of divider to just block the cage's view of the kitchen area? Or once the bird learns it's "bedtime" for him, should we not worry too much about still being up late?

The breeder clipped his wings. We would like to leave him unclipped when we get him. Can he still learn to fly at 6 months old? Would it be difficult to work with him to learn to fly since he is still so young?

We are so excited to have him and are just patiently waiting for the breeder to let us know when the bird has refused the syringe so we can pick him up. My room is full of cardboard boxes waiting to be cut into squares so I can turn them into toys LOL

 

[bill_e]

For best health, he needs 12 hours of dark, quiet sleep. Would a sleep cage be possible?

 

[chris-md]

Regarding the clipping and flying, he won’t learn to fly at 6 months. With clipped wings he won’t be able to fly until his first molt when he loses the clipped feathers and grows new ones (I don’t know what age they get their first molt. With eclfctus it’s often after their first year).

It won’t be hard to teach when he does grow them out. . He’ll still be young and eager to learn. It’ll go much quicker if you start wmtarget training as soon as you get him. You’ll be able to use this to easily get him to fly.

 

[charmedbyekkie]

He’ll definitely 100% need 12 hours of sleep. How you go about that is up to you, but it’s not negotiable if you want to avoid a grumpy bird.

What I suggest is you decide what his awake hours should be. Cairo’s on a 12-12 timing. Since he goes to sleep at midnight, when I get off work, we have a few hours to play and train. We cover it, so we can keep working late into the night if we want to. The moment it goes dark inside his cage, he goes to sleep and will even sleep through us talking or watching a movie (we had a night-vision camera to keep an eye on him). For us, Cairo is incredibly light-sensitive. If we’re outside walking and the sun sets, then he’ll start acting a little sleepier if we’re in a less well-lit area. Then in the morning, I slip breakfast into his cage before I leave for work, and my partner uncovers his cage at 12 noon.

Because at first, Cairo didn’t understand the point of the cage cover (he thought we were shunning him), he was rejecting it with calls and clambering all over. We have tried not covering his cage, but because he sees us awake especially since the lights are on, he doesn’t want to be inside his cage for sleep - he’d ask to be let out to be with us. He doesn’t know to put himself to sleep because if his flock isn’t sleeping, he doesn’t think it’s bedtime. They’re naturally flock creatures. So reverse, if he does see both of us sleeping, he’ll go to sleep.

Now I’ve also noticed if I use a single layer of a towel, the light still goes through - it literally has to be almost pitch black, so I use a couple of layers. And I’ve also noticed if the cover doesn’t go all the way down, he runs down to peak out and talk to us.

The sleep cover is a ritualistic cue. Without that, he doesn’t think it’s sleep time and thinks that we, his flock, are shunning him.

It doesn’t have to be a huge cage cover, like Bill mentioned it could be a sleep cage (which would be smaller and easily coverable).

 

[tfw]

That's cool though that i can set the sleep hours. I guess we will just have to study the night patterns. The cage is actually in the sitting room with no tv. The tv is in the kitchen. We usually shut off the sitting and dining room lights around 9 and no one hangs out in there. We had already planned on installing doors into the kitchen so that would help with the noise. While it won't be total darkness I will see how he does with just a partition blocking his view of where people walk past from the stairwell. The breeder has his cages set up in this hige airy space with lots of natural light. Ill have to ask him if he covers the cages but I doubt it. The 3 cages with bonded pairs have big nest boxes so they do not cover those cages.

Good to know about the flying thing!! Glad we won't have major issues with him learning later.

We plan on building up the area under our deck. We always wanted to screen it in and have it as usable space. We want to screen it and add reinforcement so we can let the bird be outside with us and have him fly around freely under there with us.

One thing, too, is that the bird is super friendly and tame, but shy. He is around just the couple, although they get to see people because they run a business at their house. He will be moving into an active house of 5 people. Any advice how to get him acclimated? Kids know to stay calm and talk softly.

 

[EllenD]

I'm confused on his breeder "clipping his wings" when he's not even weaned yet...That's not good at all, and I would be very upset about that and honestly worried about what other things this breeder is doing...Birds need to fully-fledge and be flying with complete control and direction long before their wings are ever clipped. Any reputable breeder should know that clipping a bird's wings before they are weaned/fully-fledge often causes severe neurological/psychological damage that results in the bird never properly maturing...Often you end-up with a "Perpetual Baby" that has trouble fully-weaning or weans and then regresses back to begging for feedings once they go to their home, they often never learn to fly properly or at all, they reject solid food completely and constantly beg to be fed and also to be held and comforted, etc...We've had a couple senior members on here end-up with birds that were either Force-Weaned or clipped before they fledged/weaned fully and they have ended-up with either a perpetual baby bird that is very difficult to feed and just handled overall because they are not fully-developed mentally, or they have died...

I'm not telling you this to scare you or discourage you from getting this baby Macaw, but I'm kind of shocked that a Macaw breeder who hand-raises babies would ever clip a baby's wings prior to them being fully-weaned...I encourage you to do your own, independent research on this online, you don't need to take my word for it, but it's very common knowledge and the detrimental effects are not only well-known, but they're also very common.

 

[tfw]

So if the wings are already clipped so young he won't learn to fly at all? He was hatched june 11 2018. He mentioned the baby was already trying to fly.

 

[chris-md]

He will learn to fly. Don’t worry about that aspect. Though I’ll echo Ellen it’s disturbing that he won’t be allowed to properly fledge (it’s a mental health and development issue). What Ellen is highlighting is more the rather questionable ethics of clipping a parrot before it has fledged. It calls the breeder quality into question.

But birds are resilient and will ultimately bounce back from it. Everything will be OK

 

[EllenD]

Yeah, no, I'm sorry, I didn't at all mean that he won't ever learn to fly...What I meant was that just as others said before me, when a bird's wings are clipped too early it can actually result in much larger issues than being able to fly...A lot of people don't realize this, and why would you, but any breeder should...In fact, I would say that most birds in that situation do learn to fly, at least to some extent, the issues that they end up having are usually neurological and psychological...

Clipping a bird too early, either before it weans/fully-fledges, basically causes developmental issues, and usually results in some personality characteristics, eating habits, begging/crying habits, etc., it's like they never mature and are "perpetual baby birds"...It has little to actually do with flying, but rather development and maturing...

I would rather be totally honest with you than lie to you about this, I was quite surprised when you said that the baby Macaw that you are waiting to fully-wean before you bring him home was already clipped by his breeder...That's a really horrible breeding practice, and it can result is a lot of serious neurological, psychological, and behavioral issues with the bird for the rest of his life...I have no explanation for you as to why your breeder would do this, but regardless of the reason it's terrible breeding practice and you have the right to know this...Does it mean that your specific bird will have life-long neurological and developmental issues for sure? No. But the possibility is definitely there, and I'd rather that you knew this than not...

If you do a Google search for "Problems with clipping a baby bird's wings too early" you'll get a lot of reading from journal articles, Veterinarian-written articles, etc. that can explain to you exactly what the negative consequences of this can be, and see some examples of birds that have issues due to being clipped too soon. And there are a couple of senior members here that actually have adult parrots that are suffering from lifelong neurological issues due to this being done, hopefully they'll chime in too...But I highly suggest you do some research on this topic, because again, this is a life-long commitment you're making and you deserve to know what may possibly happen as a result of this breeder clipping an unweaned baby's wings before he has fully-fledged...It's pretty bad, especially since he's not only unweaned, but he's also not fully-fledged yet. That's the killer...

 

[tfw]

Thanks all for all the advice and information. We have decided to stick with this bird. We were already in love with him when we met him.

He is ready to come home! We will be picking him up in a few days. I just finished building his first PVC perch/gym area. I just need to accessorize it and score, sand, and wipe down all the PVC so he can grip it better.

 

[Inger]

Depending on the clip, your bird may still be able to fly. Bumble was allowed to fledge and then her breeder gave her a very light clip. It didn’t even really slow her down. Hopefully that will be the case for you as well.

Can’t wait to see pics when you get him home!!


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