Grumpy Macaw?

**katidid1347** · 11-27-2020, 06:23 PM

Hello!
We have had our Macaw for over a year now and weaned him ourselves. Our family is extremely fond of our macaw and we are very comfortable and close with him. However we have run into a few issues. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. We give him around 3 hours of quality time a day at least. He almost always has someone in the room with him and is never in his cage, but rather on an open stand. The issue comes when we leave the room and he is by himself. He isn't afraid, but he's almost offended when we leave. Sometimes we will bring him with us and all he wants to do is go back to his stand. When he seems occupied and is playing with his toys if someone leaves he demands that they come back to watch him. We have tried spending less time with him or leaving him along for longer periods to see if it was more of a matter of being used to that amount of attention, but he just seemed more upset during those times. Recently it doesn't matter how long we spend with him he just always seems upset. He never wants to cuddle or just kinda sit with us, he only wants to rough house and chew on our hands( He is usually pretty soft unless he gets really riled up). He is just a handful. Training him has become an issue as well. I'll take him into a separate room where he can't see any of his toys or food or anyone else but me, but he refuses to do anything I ask him to. He knows what I'm asking as well, because he does whatever it is I ask him to and them nips me.

A few things we have tried is getting him new toys because we wondered if he was bored, but it only seemed to help for a short while. We have tried teaching him to do short flights to see if he needs more exercise to wear him out or something, but he hates that. He also has a huge problem with people outside of our family and is just aggressive towards new people even though none of them have ever been mean to him and always feed him fun treats when they see him.Any information would be greatly appreciated. I know this is a lot so thank you for taking the time to read this as well.

**boomer girl** · 11-29-2020, 10:40 AM

Hi Kati, I wished I knew magical words to say what to do but sadly the birds in our family are the same way. I sure know Boomer was a freak when he wasnt outside of his cage with one of us here and would just not well... shut up. My sisters birds are demanding too and sadly she has learned to just put them in a separate room for a bit and let them be alone to hopefully calm down. She has a Cockatoo and a Orange wing Amazon and they both can get really loud. Sam the Too is usually super sweet but when he isnt getting lots of attention he will attack you out of the blue so he is usually in his cage when he gets moody. In a way I cant blame them for being so loud especially when they are in their cage. Boomer spent most of his day outside of the cage and sitting on us and that was about the only time he was quiet so sadly in 13 years we never found a way to quiet him down.

**katidid1347** · 12-01-2020, 02:13 PM

Thanks so much for a response. While there may not be a solution it makes us feel a little bit better that we aren’t doing anything really wrong.

**boomer girl** · 12-01-2020, 04:58 PM

I feel for you because yours is a BIG bird with a really loud voice.

It use to really make me sad hearing Boomer cheeping to get out of his cage but sometimes they just have to be in there. He was out of the cage it least 60%-70% of the time we were home but still those times he was in his cage would make us go crazy. Sadly we sometimes put him another room so we could relax without him chirping right next to us. It worked to quiet him down after awhile too because he would become bored and take a nice (quiet) nap.