Weaning a Macaw

[CPT4Wheel]

As you know I'm waiting (the loooooong wait) for my Macaw and I thought I was fine with that, until my wife calls me today to tell me she found us a bird. The only issue with the bird is that it's 10 weeks old and I would have to wean it. Now first let me say that I'm 100% retired and have all the time in the world, but I have exactly 0% experience weaning a bird. With that said, I called the reader and talked to her, she told me that weaning a bird is very easy and will create an unbreakable bond between us. She said that birds that are weaned somewhere else will never have the same kind of bond as one I wean my self. Money isn't an issue but it would save me about $800 which would just about pay for it's cage.

So I wanted to get some opinions here, what are your thoughts? Is it worth getting a young bird so that I can wean it my self? Is it doable?

 

[psychocircus91]

There is no right or wrong answer because there will always be varied opinions on this topic.
Hand feeding can be risky business with risk of damaging a baby's crop or causing aspiration if not done properly.
Raising a baby and weaning it on your own can certainly be rewarding and have value to you, but I do not agree that you cannot build the same bond with your baby if it is already weaned.
There are also risks of psychological and behavioral problems if weaning is forced too early.

If it were me, I would not do it unless I had someone close by who could help me on a regular basis initially. With that being said, others have done it successfully with proper research.

 

[SilverSage]

1)
Never trust a seller selling unweaned babies. It's UNETHICAL. It places all the risk, expense and hassle in you but the issue is that weaning and fledging is a hugely important time in the complex development of a bird, and messing it up can lead to a lifetime of biting, screaming, and a host of other problems!

2)
Unbreakable bond? HA! Biggest lie in the business! Hand feeding your own bird does NOTHING OF THE SORT! In fact it can have the OPPOSITE effect as the bird views you as parents (to gain independence from) and not peers (to build a bond with).


Listen, I'm a breeder. I have heard it all and this is the biggest lie out there designed to maximize profit for the so-called breeder.

I also have the benefit of knowing from FIRST HAND EXPERIENCE that the bond is NOT DEEPER if you do the raising yourself. That is such a lie.
How long does it take to PROPERLY wean a macaw? It can take a year! And the mental and emotional damage of hurrying that up is ASTRONOMICAL!

I would never give my money to someone who sells 10 week old macaws; they are either completely clueless or completely selfish and either way have no business raising birds.

This bird will hopefully be with you for the rest of your life; why would you jeopardize that by starting off on shaky ground with a shady dealer?

I am sorry if I'm coming on strong here but I HATE the practice of selling unweaned parrots and it is my goal to get this practice BANNED AND OUTLAWED in the USA. It is cruel, dangerous, greedy, and evil.


So anyway that's my opinion. I absolutely despise people who sell unweaned parrots to the general public and I think they should go to jail for the damage they do to parrots and their families. In case you wondered how I REALLY feel


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[SilverSage]

Oh and it will NOT SAVE ANY MONEY! Even assuming everything goes PERFECTLY and you don't end up at the emergency vet with common hand feeding disasters, what you "save" by buying unweaned you will spend in formula and supplies.


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[wrench13]

LOL, Sage, tell us how you really feel ! BTW, I do agree with you, to a point. A parrot that is taking solid food, along with formula, partially weaned, that I am OK with as long as the owner is poperly walked thru the proceedure a few times. And I would not want to ween at this early age, when the bird is on 100% formula, for a year! I would't have an issue if they made it illegal, but how would that prevent breeders from force weaning? It might even promote it more then it happens now. Tough call. Hope I am not making an enemy with my thoughts, but thats how I sees it.

 

[wrench13]

Oops, OP, I wish you and the new addition a long and joyous relationship. Sorry if the thread got side tracked.

 

[SilverSage]

Lol you could tell me all babies should be sold unweaned and you wouldn't make an enemy of me. I have strong beliefs based on fact and science, but you disagreeing with me won't make you my enemy
And if the OP chooses to buy a 10 week old baby, THEY won't be my enemy either. I really only consider people to be my enemies who intentionally harm innocent people and animals. Like terrorists and dog fighters. Those are my enemies.

The thing is, it isn't that people wean before the baby is PHYSICALLY ready, it's the mental and emotional side of things that really concern me. I have just seen SO MUCH PAIN caused by this practice (it's extremely common in my area), and I would say maybe 1/100 babies turns out ok, even though the people learn how to do the actual feeding and don't have any medical disasters. It truly breaks my heart.


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[CPT4Wheel]

1)
Never trust a seller selling unweaned babies. It's UNETHICAL. It places all the risk, expense and hassle in you but the issue is that weaning and fledging is a hugely important time in the complex development of a bird, and messing it up can lead to a lifetime of biting, screaming, and a host of other problems!

2)
Unbreakable bond? HA! Biggest lie in the business! Hand feeding your own bird does NOTHING OF THE SORT! In fact it can have the OPPOSITE effect as the bird views you as parents (to gain independence from) and not peers (to build a bond with).


Listen, I'm a breeder. I have heard it all and this is the biggest lie out there designed to maximize profit for the so-called breeder.

I also have the benefit of knowing from FIRST HAND EXPERIENCE that the bond is NOT DEEPER if you do the raising yourself. That is such a lie.
How long does it take to PROPERLY wean a macaw? It can take a year! And the mental and emotional damage of hurrying that up is ASTRONOMICAL!

I would never give my money to someone who sells 10 week old macaws; they are either completely clueless or completely selfish and either way have no business raising birds.

This bird will hopefully be with you for the rest of your life; why would you jeopardize that by starting off on shaky ground with a shady dealer?

I am sorry if I'm coming on strong here but I HATE the practice of selling unweaned parrots and it is my goal to get this practice BANNED AND OUTLAWED in the USA. It is cruel, dangerous, greedy, and evil.


So anyway that's my opinion. I absolutely despise people who sell unweaned parrots to the general public and I think they should go to jail for the damage they do to parrots and their families. In case you wondered how I REALLY feel


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You are coming off strong, but that is what I needed; a reality check. I was completely fine with waiting then this carrot was dangled in front of me. I knew, in my heart, that it was a bad idea, I just needed someone else to tell me.

 

[SilverSage]

1)

Never trust a seller selling unweaned babies. It's UNETHICAL. It places all the risk, expense and hassle in you but the issue is that weaning and fledging is a hugely important time in the complex development of a bird, and messing it up can lead to a lifetime of biting, screaming, and a host of other problems!



2)

Unbreakable bond? HA! Biggest lie in the business! Hand feeding your own bird does NOTHING OF THE SORT! In fact it can have the OPPOSITE effect as the bird views you as parents (to gain independence from) and not peers (to build a bond with).





Listen, I'm a breeder. I have heard it all and this is the biggest lie out there designed to maximize profit for the so-called breeder.



I also have the benefit of knowing from FIRST HAND EXPERIENCE that the bond is NOT DEEPER if you do the raising yourself. That is such a lie.

How long does it take to PROPERLY wean a macaw? It can take a year! And the mental and emotional damage of hurrying that up is ASTRONOMICAL!



I would never give my money to someone who sells 10 week old macaws; they are either completely clueless or completely selfish and either way have no business raising birds.



This bird will hopefully be with you for the rest of your life; why would you jeopardize that by starting off on shaky ground with a shady dealer?



I am sorry if I'm coming on strong here but I HATE the practice of selling unweaned parrots and it is my goal to get this practice BANNED AND OUTLAWED in the USA. It is cruel, dangerous, greedy, and evil.





So anyway that's my opinion. I absolutely despise people who sell unweaned parrots to the general public and I think they should go to jail for the damage they do to parrots and their families. In case you wondered how I REALLY feel





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You are coming off strong, but that is what I needed; a reality check. I was completely fine with waiting then this carrot was dangled in front of me. I knew, in my heart, that it was a bad idea, I just needed someone else to tell me.

As long as you know that even though I am passionate about this, I would never turn on you for making this choice. You want a macaw so much and it would be so sad to see your journey sabotaged from the start


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[itzjbean]

Yep I gotta agree with Sivlersage on this one, as appealing as it sounds getting your baby macaw that early, watching it grow, starting your bond at a young age, there are just SO many things that can go wrong in the process of weaning. But I applaud you for asking here first, because so many times I will see posts about 'I just bought this 4 week old baby ____ and I was told to keep it in a box', -- THAT kind of idiocy makes me want to pul my hair out, so THANK YOU for posting here before you decided anything

 

[SilleIN]

I would like to confirm Sage's statement, that you get a greater bond if you wean the babies yourself. I really don't see that much of a difference in the bond. My Trudi came from a reputable breeder, who did everything by the book. She was fully weaned and fledged, when I got her.

When she has a bad dream, she flies to my bed and sleeps under the blanket. She is the perfect baby and I could not have done a better job with her.

I have attached the latest video of Trudi (Thanks for giving me an opportunity to do so )

[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kX1B7lIQc4U"]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kX1B7lIQc4U[/ame]

 

[YUMgrinder]

I would like to confirm Sage's statement, that you get a greater bond if you wean the babies yourself. I really don't see that much of a difference in the bond. My Trudi came from a reputable breeder, who did everything by the book. She was fully weaned and fledged, when I got her.

When she has a bad dream, she flies to my bed and sleeps under the blanket. She is the perfect baby and I could not have done a better job with her.

I have attached the latest video of Trudi (Thanks for giving me an opportunity to do so )

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kX1B7lIQc4U

That is so awesome! Do you have any videos of trudi playing where the light is a better? It's very dark. very cute non the less!

 

[SilleIN]

I would like to confirm Sage's statement, that you get a greater bond if you wean the babies yourself. I really don't see that much of a difference in the bond. My Trudi came from a reputable breeder, who did everything by the book. She was fully weaned and fledged, when I got her.

When she has a bad dream, she flies to my bed and sleeps under the blanket. She is the perfect baby and I could not have done a better job with her.

I have attached the latest video of Trudi (Thanks for giving me an opportunity to do so )

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kX1B7lIQc4U

That is so awesome! Do you have any videos of trudi playing where the light is a better? It's very dark. very cute non the less!

Sorry, but I could easily make more, as she does like that almost daily. Will keep it in mind, when she does it next

 

[Birdman666]

I concur.

It's a myth that you get a stronger bond. Baby birds bond with the person who pays attention to them and plays with them. A weaned bird will do that just fine...

And if you don't know what you are doing... it is possible to kill the baby. It's possible to give the baby a severe infection. Sour crop. It's possible to give the baby crop burns. In some instances to asphyxiate them... People put a tube of formula down the wrong hole, and that's it. Too much too fast, they spit up, the bird get pneumonia and dies. Make the formula too cold, they spit it out. Make it too hot, crop burns! Don't check for hot spots? same deal. You can perforate a crop as well.

THERE IS A LOT THAT CAN GO WRONG!

I've done it. I've been at this a long time. IT STILL MAKES ME NERVOUS WHEN I DO IT... And I've done it for people who got in over their heads and almost killed their birds.

SO MY ADVICE IS DON'T!!! If you do, get an experienced mentor to teach you the ropes BEFORE you start with a live baby, who can check in on you and make sure the baby is doing okay. Otherwise, I really really wouldn't!

 

[EllenD]

Wow, your wife found one of the most unethical bird breeders she could, lol. I don't mean that as a knock against your wife, but that breeder sounds horribly unethical and only interested in making money, and not concerned with the well-being of her babies one iota. And I say this as a former cockatiel and budgie breeder of 20 years, and I have nothing to lose or to gain taking a stand either way. That being said, every single thing this breeder told your wife is pretty much an absolute lie, and designed only for her to make more money. And you will save no money at all in the end, by the way.

#1 The whole "You'll make a bond with a bird you hand-feed and wean that you cannot make if you don't hand-feed it and wean it" is totally untrue and actually offensive to me. Think about that statement; if that was true then breeders would never be able to sell their babies, and their babies, who have the intelligence of a 3-4 year old human child, would not be able to leave their breeders without breaking that "unbreakable bond", lol. It's total crap, pardon me, but what makes an "Unbreakable Bond" with a bird is a loving, attentive owner that listens to their bird and understands what it wants and needs, who treats the bird not like a "pet" but rather like a member of their family, like a child they just gave birth to. They involve their birds in everything they do, take them everywhere with them, eat their meals with them, get them through puberty and hormonal issues, comfort them when they're sick, etc. When you hand-feed baby birds it can be a very special event for both parties, but being the food machine until the bird can eat solid food on it's own isn't what forms that special bond, it's what you do in-between hand-feedings that does that.

#2 Hand Feeding is certainly not easy at all, if it was there wouldn't be hundreds if not thousands of posts in the Breeding, General Health, and unfortunately the Bereavement Folders on this forum! Every day I come on here to answer numerous questions from people who have never hand-fed a baby bird before yet decided to breed their birds, and now they have a huge problem. That old cliche of "If it was easy everyone would do it" certainly applies here, but it's much more than that. Please do a quick search on this forum for "Hand Feeding", "Baby won't eat", or just go into the breeding folder and scroll down. Every single day there are multiple people who only just joined the forum because their babies that they are hand-feeding have a problem, or problems. Not one question a day, MULTIPLE per day. And I wish I could tell you otherwise but since I joined this forum about a year ago I have probably responded to at least one-hundred of these hand-feeding/weaning questions where at least one of the babies ended up dying, if not the entire clutch. People very carelessly think "It's easy" for one reason or another, and a common reason is "The breeder said this was no big deal" or "The woman at the bird shop acted like this was so simple" or "The breeder only spent 5 minutes, if that, showing me how to hand-feed, and it seemed easy. I didn't know the temperature mattered!" It's terrible, I have to tell you that it gets my blood boiling; SilverSage's reaction is mine as well, and it's because we both have been responsible bird breeders that do it for the love of it, for the love of the birds, not to make a ton of money.

This breeder your wife found wants that 10-week old baby Macaw gone! Yesterday! No more paying for formula, no more avian vet bills, no more buying transition food, no more paying for anything pertaining to those babies, and no more responsibility to them at all. Most importantly to that breeder is the fact that if they can talk some poor, unknowledgeable, anxious bird buyer that doesn't want to wait to bring home their baby Macaw into taking home a 10-week old baby (THIS IS REALLY, EXTREMELY YOUNG AND VERY DANGEROUS FOR YOU TO BE RESPONSIBLE FOR WITH 0 EXPERIENCE), that breeder will not be responsible for any of the multitude of health issues that can and will occur between now and when that baby weans and leaves, which isn't until around 5-6 months old by the way. The avian vet bills that breeder will save are priceless! So no, you will not save $800, you will be responsible for buying all the formula, all the hand-feeding supplies, all the foods to transition the baby, and all the avian vet bills, which at the very least will be a few hundred dollars just for wellness checkups and baseline testing, at worst they will cost you thousands if something goes wrong with the hand-feeding process, which is extremely common. Usually, if nothing catastrophic happens between 10 weeks and 5-6 months at the earliest, you'll spend somewhere in the middle, which will make that $800 look like money very well spent. There are so many variables involved with successful hand-feeding and abundance weaning (if this breeder tells you that a macaw will wean in less than 5 months at a minimum they are force weaning, which is not only unethical it psychologically damages the baby) and so many things that can go wrong, I don't even like being responsible for it anymore, and that's after 20+ years and growing up in a bird breeding home.

There is a member of this forum, who is also a member of another bird forum, who received a very young baby macaw, about 10 weeks old, maybe a week or two older, about a year or so ago as a gift. It was a beautiful baby Greenwing Macaw, still covered in pin feathers, and he had to hand-feed it and wean it. I believe this baby was eating a very small amount of solid food when he got him, but not much. Almost immediately the baby started refusing to eat. He would take maybe a quarter of the formula he should be eating and then his feeding response just stopped. This poor guy was on the forums 24 hours a day, he loved this bird so much. He must have taken this baby macaw, no exaggeration, to 10 different avian vets over the span of 2-3 months, treating numerous different infections the baby had gotten from improper formula temps among other things, but it certainly was not from lack of love or effort from the owner. I felt so horribly, the baby would lose a bunch of weight, gain it back, get sick again, go on another antibiotic (must have taken 20 different meds over that time), it just went on and on and on. And there was a huge problem dealing with this situation for the owner because he had 0 experience hand-feeding or with avian health or medicine. He must have spent $5,000 or more on vet care alone, he would have had to...

If you are actually seriously thinking about taking a 10 week old Macaw and hand-feeding it until it abundance weans, you need to be prepared to spend a lot of money, but more painful than the cost, you need to be prepared to fall in love with that baby macaw and have it pass away before it weans, because that is the reality of the situation. And I can assure you that this breeder will not take any responsibility for the welfare of the baby, they may answer questions over the phone for you, maybe, but you'll be on your own. You say money isn't an issue and that's just it, money won't be the issue, everything else will be.

I'm just as frustrated as SilverSage is now, I hate this breeder behavior, and it's getting worse and worse, breeder basically serving as places for birds to breed and eggs to hatch, and that's it. They are making a ton of money for doing nothing and don't care one bit about their babies, only about dollar signs. I still can't believe all of the things you were told by this breeder. We just had a new member come on who bought a weaned Suncheek, spent $700, and the bird came to her sick. The breeder offered her half of her money back only and she would have to give the bird back to this breeder, who insisted the bird was fine and would be resold immediately without any vet care, even though she called the breeder the same day she bought the bird to tell her something was wrong. So she took the Suncheek to a general vet, who agreed something was wrong but didn't know what, gave the bird antibiotics and pain meds. So she again called the breeder, told her what the vet said and wanted her to know so she could check the rest of her birds to make sure they weren't also sick. This breeder didn't care, said the vet didn't know what he was talking about, and again told her that she could give the bird back that day for a partial refund. When she asked the breeder if she would get the baby to an avian vet the breeder admitted that no she wouldn't, she had a buyer for the bird immediately, and told her to keep the pain meds and antibiotics as she wouldn't give them to the baby, she would sell it immediately after she brought it back. So this breeder would sell this bird twice and if it died she didn't care one bit. This is yet just another example of how shady bird breeders are becoming, and it's just sad.



"Dance like nobody's watching..."

 

[Birdman666]

I have attached the latest video of Trudi (Thanks for giving me an opportunity to do so )

That video looks a lot like my ruby, except Ruby plays like that upside down. She actually rolls over like a red front, off my shoulder, down the front of me, to my lap, with her feet up in the air... playing as she goes...

 

[CPT4Wheel]

Is 17 weeks you young to get a GW? I found a nice bird that the Reader said would be ready to go around June 3-4 and has a hatch date of Feb 6.

Also, does it matter if the bird is banded or not?

 

[SilleIN]

17 weeks should be around the time they wean. Just make sure the breeder has taught the bird to perch and to not have clipped the wings, as your bird needs to fully fledge before any clipping is considered.

I can now try to convince you to never clip their wings. Birds respiratory system is based on a set of lungs AND 9 air sacks. These air sacks are dependent in the movement of wings to fully function.

I have 3 large fully flighted macaws in my house (I have 4 macaws, but one of them has an old broken wing) and when I go outside with them, I just harness them.

 

[SilverSage]

17 weeks I would say Is on the young end but within normal range. Just be sure the breeder allows babies to wean on their own schedule rather than reducing formula (force weaning).

Also a huge AMEN to the above post! NEVER allow the breeder to clip; that's YOUR choice and your bird NEEEEEEEDDS to fully fledge. Early clipping does permanent mental damage and is cruel.


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[greytness]

17 weeks is still on the young side to be completely weaned. Mine was almost 6 months old before he was completely done with formula. If you receive your bird at that age, be prepared to provide comfort feeds at least once daily awhile longer until the bird shows you that he doesn't want it any longer. My macaw had refused formula for 3 days before we got him, but he regressed back to it for another 6 weeks.

Ask the breeder to show you how before you take him home.

By that age the syringe feedings are a whole lot easier to do.