Help with Broody Macaw

Hi
My B&G Macaw (rescue, ?gender, ?age) is really hormonal. He/she is always trying to find a corner to go to and will regurgitate there for hours if I left him/her. If there is any paper around he/she will shred it and start nest building. He/she will not let anyone near the cage or any of his/her little spots that he/she is currently working on. I am the favorite person so am always welcome.

I try distraction with toys, outdoor time, lots of sleep (12 hrs), good diet. I have tried moving the cage but that didn’t change anything.

He/she was recently at my boarders while we were away and apparently showed none of these behaviors. He/she was great for the first couple of days home then went back to the same routine.

Any suggestions or thoughts appreciated.

Is he/she flighted?

How about a play stand with no paper or ways to get down/off the stand? Do you give him/her wood to shred and chew?

I'm sorry I'm not of much help, I hear it is just learning to manage their hormones and giving them no chance to nest, hide in corners or shred paper of any kind that may resemble a nest.

Hormonal macs

Thanks for the quick reply.

No he/she is not flighted? Would it help if he/she was?

Ya, paper and a dark hole...my husband likened it to giving a teenage boy a dark room and a Playboy.

I have moved all paper out of sight but any small corner seems to do. I bring him into the kitchen to look out the window and be busy with me but he will find a little spot and start up again.

Thanks again.

Sounds like female behavior to me, you'll know for sure if she starts laying infertile eggs; hopefully that doesn't happen, because that's when this becomes a problem and a health risk.

This will pass, right now she is obviously going through a hormonal period, and any small, dark places are going to trigger it, and anything that can be used or thought of as "nesting material" is also going to trigger it. Again, the problem with this continuing is the possibility of egg-laying if she is in-fact a female. Her being flighted may actually help to stop this, but honestly for a bird as large as a Macaw, they typically don't fly much inside the house anyway because they know that their wing-span is just too large to do so.

The idea here is to not allow her to go into any small, dark places, and to not allow her to have anything that could be considered "nesting material". She needs to ALWAYS have something else to do and something else holding her attention, and if you are "her person", then you're going to have to be the one to not allow her to go to those corners or small, dark places, and you're going to have to take away any possible nesting-materials and immediately give her an alternative to chew on, like a toy or a foraging activity that doesn't include paper, bedding, etc. So getting her a play-stand with toys on it to chew on/play with is a very good idea, it will keep her up off of the floor (that's key, keeping her off of the floor), and keeping her occupied is going to be key to trying to curb this behavior and to try to knock her out of breeding-season. If you see her going to a corner, you have to bring her back out of it. She needs to be up off of the floor and on a stand, on top of her cage, etc.

Also, if she's not already on a "natural light schedule", then this is also going to be very important; usually after a couple of weeks on a natural light schedule they will stop the hormonal behavior. This simply means having the place where she sleeps be in a spot that makes the sunrise and sunset visible to her, and she needs to go to bed/be covered at sunset/right after she watches sunset, and then she needs to be up/uncovered at sunrise. This helps tremendously to knock them out of breeding season.

What Ellen said!


Has he/she had the complete medical check-up yet?
If bloodwork needs to be done (and thrust me, you want all the major misery-causing ones done at least once!) get a DNA-test as well (it very cheap and fast, it probably the first they can give you a result on).

I have a masturbating B&G (also not fun to hear/see and she does not even need a dark corner for that) and the only thing that works is active distraction aka playing with stuff she can throw aound and chase... no I cannot do that all day long, but she (thank .......) has not enough stamina for that (yet?)
and at the moment she cannot do anything remotely resembling nesting - because then the agression comes out: so she can sit on the tabletop and shred cardboard, paper and tissues, throw it around etc. all she likes, but the moment she starts shuffling/ chickenscratching in it and walking her upturned butt backwards... the end!


Sometimes the reguritating is just something inspired by boredom, not hormones.
Eating the breakfast twice (or four times) is a way to pass the time when your are bored out of your skull (note: it can also be a form of selfcomforting, but since she did not do that in a new and also scary situation I think that one is unlikely in your case).
If she has toys but is never touching them/ playing, then mayby she does not know how ... so you have to teach her.

(it took mine months to just start chewing on a few willowbranches... no idea why she did not just do that ... all macaws are born woodchippers... she only ate t-shirts and clothes I was wearing and I do not want to encourage that!

So ... patience, it may take a while)

Thank you all for your replies. Glad to hear about another masturbating Macaw...mine gets "busy" every now and again to. My teenage son thinks it's hilarious.

Has anybody heard about hormone that you can give to Macaws? Someone mentioned something about an implant. Does it work?

I try to keep the schedule to sunrise/sunset it's just that we are in a northern location so our summer nights are long. Thankfully it is starting to get a bit better now. I try and create a sunset by turning off lights gradually over about a half hour. Good news is winter night are also very long.

I think I will work to keep him/her off the floor and get her in for a full check up and some DNA testing...even if just so I can stop doing the him/her, he/she thing!

It gets worse: I found a cracked egg this morning...so masturbation pays of as well / just my bloody luck: somehting else to worry about...

Lots and lots of people have "naughty"birds, but it usually not discussed because wel ... sex and shame probably.

Usually it's fixable with more sleep and sober the feed ( longer nights and less abundance of food is a great HINT to the bird that funseason is over...but if like me you have a rescue that needs feeding up...the latter is not really an option)
Just drain the energy by playing other games

ugh birds.... never a boring day!
(you do not appreciate "boring" till you've had a parrot for a few years / evil grinnnn)


Nah- as far as I've read the hormone-thing almost never works.
Its like swatting a fly with a hammer anyway.
If neutering was an option loads more 'toos would have found homes... but hormones play an important role with feather growth and -health as well, so do not go there if you can avoid it.

It would be a good idea to find out the gender of your bird. Hormones affect males and females differently and based on your description of behaviors, especially masturbation, sounds like female behavior. "Lupron" is probably the "hormone" you heard of, and it is generally given as an absolute last resort to females who won't stop laying eggs and are at risk of death because of it. It can be given to males too, but generally it is again reserved as a treatment of last resort and you are not yet at the point where pharmaceutical intervention is the only option left. When you say 'good diet' how much sugar is in your birds diet? Sugar, even the sugar in fruit can exacerbate hormonal behavior. Many pellets also contain sugar. Fruit should be minimal, vegetables should be offered more, if you feed pellets, a sugar free or low sugar brand should be offered and warm, mushy food should NOT be offered. If there are key spots she likes to go, I suggest putting something scary in them, like old CD's shiny side up (things that reflect/scatter light are good deterrents, but be sure it can't hurt the bird or wouldn't be toxic or sharp if the bird touched it).

Making an educated guess here, but your bird is likely at the age it is going through puberty based on this out of season hormonal behavior, which for a large macaw would be about 6-8 years old. Parrot puberty typically lasts a few years of really bad hormones before tapering off over the next few years until they fall into their adult cycle of getting hormonal for about 6 weeks in the spring and being 'normal' the rest of the year. Unfortunately, with no background, you don't know if the bird is just entering puberty, in the middle or nearing the end.

An avian vet should be able to give you a better understanding of where to go from here. They would be able to give a better guesstimate on age, hormones and be able to do a DNA gender test. They'd also be able to give a baseline of health, though they generally don't get super hormonal if they aren't healthy.

Using a hormonal-implant does in-fact work very well for some birds, others it doesn't. It really does depend on the specific, chronic behaviors that your bird is exhibiting and what you are trying to accomplish as to whether or not the hormone treatments will be successful.

There are 2 situations where a hormone-treatment is suggested and where it usually works very, very well:

#1) A female who starts laying eggs chronically, which is very stressful and potentially lethal to her health. If your bird does in-fact lay a clutch of infertile eggs, and then from that point forward continues to lay clutch after clutch after clutch, even if it's only one egg at a time, then something needs to be done to stop this behavior, as it can result in a horrible calcium-deficiency, which can result in frequent bone fractures, heartbeat irregularities, and Egg-Binding. When non-medical methods fail to stop the egg-laying, then hormone-treatment is highly suggested, usually with either Lupron or Depot.

#2) If your bird (usually this also occurs with females) starts constantly and continually masturbating all the time, all day long, every day, and it doesn't ever stop, as if your bird is ALWAYS in breeding-season year-round. Usually another behavior that comes right along with constant masturbation is an extremely unhealthy attachment to one specific person in the household. Female Macaws are notorious for this. Usually what happens is that they will constantly masturbate and regurgitate all day long, every day, with every person in the household, but there is one particular person in the household that the bird has an abnormally close, unhealthy relationship/bond with, to the point where that person literally cannot leave the sight of the bird without the bird throwing a complete tantrum of screaming until the person comes back into their sight. This person cannot do anything at all without the bird being on them or at least with them, such as simply eating dinner without the bird being on their shoulder. The bird has to sleep next to this person every night or no one in the house will sleep. And honestly, in situations like this that I've seen, the relationship is actually reciprocated by the person in most cases, and encouraged by the person. The person also has an unhealthy bond with their bird, and always has to be with their bird. This often develops between people who get their bird, usually a Macaw or a Cockatoo, as a young baby, and has lived with them and been their primary care-giver for years and years, if not decades. Since the bird cannot mate with this person and breed with them, the frustration of this is what causes the constant and continual masturbation on anyone and anything. They can also become quite aggressive with other people in the household, especially their person's spouse or significant other, to the point where they cannot touch each other at all without the bird attacking the spouse. In situations like this the bird's reproductive system needs to be completely shut-down, and their primary sex hormones need to be ceased, and this is where the long-term implants are very successful, usually starting to work within a month or so of injection, and lasting up to a year before needing replaced. However, usually there is an extreme behavioral modification that needs to be executed by the person involved, and a lot of the time they are unwilling to separate from the bird at all...Sometimes this situation is fully on the bird's end and is not being encouraged by the person, but what ends-up happening is that just to keep the bird happy and from screaming constantly and attacking others in the house, the person gives-in to the bird and just keeps the bird with them literally 24/7, 365.

If your bird fails to snap-out of breeding season and just continually displays constant "nesting" behavior, masturbation, etc. throughout the year, and things like a natural-light schedule, diet, behavior modification such as removing her from the corner whenever she tries to go to it, etc. all fail, then it's a good idea to talk to your Certified Avian Vet about at least trying hormone-treatment. Usually it requires a treatment that completely stops all hormonal activity and completely shuts-down the reproductive system, basically "chemical castration", in order for the treatment to work. This would be Lupron. It is often used successfully in humans that suffer from conditions such as polycystic ovaries, endometriosis, etc. by completely shutting-down all primary sex hormone creation and release, and does put the woman into full, chemical menopause. Been there, done that when I was 28, due to stage 3 endometriosis. I literally went into menopause all at once, suddenly, and once you have the shot it lasts for 3 months, there's not way to reverse it...Bad idea for a 28 year old female, as you can't even take hormone replacement drugs to get relief...great for broody-birds though, lol.

Instead of offering a food bowel to your macaw to eat out of every day, have your macaw forage for the food instead.

Avoid feeding any warm foods - if necessary, limit or stop any mushy foods your macaw may be eating.

Avoid petting any area that may sexually arouse your macaw.

Try a diet change

Try changing the cage interior

Instead of decreasing lighting, you may need to increase lighting - up to 72 hours of complete light (as a last resort before Lupron)