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..."
