Picking a right species of a smaller Macaw

vdrandom

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Hey. My wife is considering getting a Macaw, but we have difficulties finding any useful information on how particular species differ from each other in terms of personality. It is obvious that each bird is individual and might differ a lot from the rest of the species in general, but going in blind seems like a very bad idea.

I have posted a thread earlier this week here, and in general what kind of bird we would like to get is described there. We live in a small apartment, so larger Macaw is out of question, so far we are considering:
  • Illiger's Macaw
  • Military Macaw
  • Severe Macaw
From what I can tell from reading online and watching youtube, Hahn's Macaw looks like a Macaw, but in terms of behaviour and personality doesn't have much in common with the rest of the Macaw family.

What I'd like to know is how they (or maybe some other species I haven't stumbled upon yet?) differ from each other. Pros and cons, maybe some real life experience with the birds.

A bit of background (much more of this is discussed in the aforementioned thread). My wife is adamant on getting a hand-fed chick, so getting an adult bird is out of question. She used to have a couple of budgies she successfully trained a few years back, but now she wants a more complex parrot and a companion. She loves animals in general, particularly adores birds. Fun fact: she has legally changed her name to "Sova", which is "Owl" in Russian. :)

If you'd like me to be more specific about anything, please don't hesitate to ask. I think it is very important to gather as much information as possible before making such an important decision. Thank you so very much in advance!
 

chris-md

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I’ll reiterate: NOT A MILITARY. this would be a mistake for you.

Severe macaw would be a huge mistake as well. They overbond to one person like nobody’s business.

both of these species don’t make good family pets. Please heed this warning. They are the worst possible options you could choose. I suggest looking outside macaws for your options for medium sized parrots.
 
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vdrandom

vdrandom

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Thank you Chris. After some consideration and a bit of luck we stumbled upon a very chatty breeder who managed to make us reconsider getting a Macaw. My wife seems to have settled on a Caique. At least for now.

I'll probably keep adding general questions to my initial thread or use a Caique specific section further on.
 

chris-md

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I’m glad we were able to avert a disaster!

please note that caiques, while great, are not medium sized birds. They are decidedly on the smaller size. I’m not sure how important “medium/mid size” is to you, but they do not meet that specific requirement.
 
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vdrandom

vdrandom

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I’m glad we were able to avert a disaster!

please note that caiques, while great, are not medium sized birds. They are decidedly on the smaller size. I’m not sure how important “medium/mid size” is to you, but they do not meet that specific requirement.
Thank you for the clarification! I'm pretty sure she's fine with it. She originally wanted a Caique, but I suggested that we should look into alternatives since there are so many parrot species out there.
 

wrench13

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We have a Caique sub forum on here, https://www.parrotforums.com/forums/caiques.25/
I suggest you and the miss's read all the threads on there, to get a better idea of living with a Caique. That can be very trainable for tricks and of course they are hyper active clowns, which could be good or bad, depending on your wants and so forth. My wife and I got mobbed by a herd of Caiques once, at a large parrot store. They had a large cage with maybe 15 Caiques in it. A new staff person wanted to take just one out, didn't lock the door well, and all of the Caiques came boiling out of the cage, jumping and hopping all over the place. Very funny to watch. Not so funny for the staff person.
 
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vdrandom

vdrandom

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Oh, I will be lurking that sub forum in the weeks to come, that's for certain! I just so happened to create this thread, so I came here to mention that the thread subject question is no longer relevant, and to provide context as to why.

And to thank you all once ogain for your answers and other useful information, of course. :)
 

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