Looking to become a breeder...?

[applechews]

Hi guys. I posted this on a american forum but thought I would get a better answer here.

I have long time been a fan of birds and parrots and have 3 birds of my own, a galah, sun conure and cinnamon greencheek. I have a dream to own and breed macaws, I live in sydney, australia and there are hardly any macaws here (whole of australia, not just syd.), so a breeding pair alone is about $10,000 (blue and golds). I was just wondering if I could ask a few questions as to what the expenses of breeder are. Let me just say straight up that I am not in this for the money, but I need to know if I can at least break even because otherwise I can't afford to do this.

My dream is to breed top quality hand raised macaw babies, I want them to go to their new homes with already learned recall and step up etc. (fully flighted, like my current birds.) I plan to make my buyers go through a small check list to make sure they are 100% keen on owning the macaw for life, and will treat it properly, I will also offer a unlimited cooling off period, meaning they can return the macaw at any time if they no longer want it/can keep it, rather then it being neglected or mistreated. To be honest I doubt this would happen in australia due them being so rare and costing $5,500+, but some people have more money the sense. After I had being doing this for a few years, my ultimate goal would be to introduce hybrids into australia. Starting with miligolds. I have never seen or even heard of hybrids in australia and I think they are insanely beautiful, I would love to help introduce them over here.

My son is a computer whiz and has made his own website, so he will make a website for me and my parrots if I were to do this, too.

I have tried to google prices of things online but can't even seem to find a store that sells breeders supplies to go off.

So lets say I was to purchase a breeding pair of blue and golds, that's $10,000. I would need to build an aviary, which wouldn't cost me much as my friend is a builder and can get cheap supplies. How much am I looking at in breeding supplies? Incubator, cages, rearing mix, dna sexing etc... a fully hand raised baby B&G macaw sells for $5,500-$6,500 here. Taking into account breeding and raising expenses, do you think I would break even or make money? As I said before, I am not in it for the money but unless I make enough to keep going, I can't fulfill my dream.

I would also love to do the same thing with breeding sun conures and green cheek conures, as I have a soft spot for them and I think they make absolutely fantastic pets - and maybe one day breed amazons, as I have met a lot and they are also such wonderful birds and quite rare here, $2,000 for a blue fronted, $4,000 for a yellow headed.

Does anyone raise macaws and know roughly how much it costs to do so? I would really really love to do this, but I need to get an idea of what expenses I am looking at first. Also, how many babies do macaws have per year?

Thanks in advance for ANY info!

[Robyn]

Hi Applechews & welcome to Aussie Birds.

I am sorry but i won't comment on your thread because i don't support hybrids in any parrot.

I don't hand rear the large Macaws but i do rear the Black Toos & Eclectus & that costs me heaps. And you can not rear these parrots on a budget you have to have a good bank balance to back you up should things go pear shape like one of the birds dying.

Sorry i can't really help. But do your homework you never know where it will lead you.

[avinet]

It's a bit hard to know where to start here!

Firstly can I take it that you have no experience of breeding and hand rearing parrots? From your message that sounds like the case, and your experience is owning three pet birds. So I am assuming that in my comments.

Taking on the large macaws is not a trivial exercise. They are big, VERY loud - if you are in suburbia your neighbours will have to be more tolerant than most are these days. I have a friend who has several pairs and someone living over a kilometre away complained to council. Feeding them is expensive - quite likely $10 a day at a guess. Building an aviary big enough and strong enough is expensive.

And buying them. There are two choice. Either you buy a young pair (unrelated) costing each in the $5000 plus bracket and hope they are compatible (likely if they are young enough) and then wait or you buy a pair already breeding and pay a lot more than $10,000. A young pair may breed at 3 years, but I know breeders with 10 year old pairs yet to breed. A good pair that are successfully breeding could be $15,000 to $20,000 quite easily, with no guarantee that they will breed in a different location.

If you do get them to breed then hopefully the parents will incubate, if not an incubator such as a Brinsea is reasonable and is in the range $500 to $ 1000. A brooder can be made yourself but a commercial one such as the Kimani brooder (the one I use) is perhaps $700-$800 - I bought mine 12 years ago! Hand rearing costs for mix are not that much in the greater scheme of things.

But remember that while there are quite a few pairs of Blue & Golds around these days, there are very few breeders have regular success, and a lot of pairs have never bred. And while you might get 2 or 3 babies from a good pair losing a baby happens. A friend of mine had 3 babies this winter and lost 2 before 2 weeks old - the third is doing OK though.

And then we come to hybrids. I assume you know that importation is not permitted. Scarlets or Green-wings are much rarer than Blue & Golds in Australia and are very expensive - looking in the $15000 to $20000 each for young birds. And breeding hybrids involving Scarlets and Green-wings in Australia is considered criminal by the vast majority of Australian breeders. There is such a small gene pool of these birds in Australia, with no chance of legally increasing it, that any dilution of the gene pool with hybridization is not on. In fact I believe that there has been moves by the AFA to get the Federal Government (with whom all large Macaws should be registered) to make hybrids of these birds illegal. There has been a breeder in Australia who did try to breed hybrids - most breeders will have nothing to do with him now.

There is hybrid breeding in the USA - but they have a huge gene pool compared to us with all the many thousands of wild imports they got in up to 1992 when imports of wild birds was banned, but even there a lot of breeders are opposed to breeding hybrids purely for monetary profit.

If you want to get into breeding get experience first - try Galahs for instance, there is a ready market for good socialised hand raised Galahs - up here they easily sell for several hundred dollars. Get experience first or else you may head to disaster, emotionally and financially.

And I have been involved in hand raising Blue & Golds (but not breeding them, my neighbours are tolerant but not that tolerant and there is a thread somewhere on this forum detailing that experience - I think it is in the Members Only section.

cheers,

Mike

[angelicvampyre]

I am going to agree with everything and has been said above. I think that you need to start smaller, maybe look at conures as a start. I wanted to breed big birds and started with Budgies and Conures and Quakers, now i don't breed because I found that the time, cost and also the emotional effort that you have to put in is just far to great for me to take, but that's me. However I am gald i started at that point and not pushed myself into the larger birds first and lost even more money. I still have a breeding pair of GCC but they don't breed, honesty in 2 years I have had ONE egg and ONE chick and that is the only reason that I have kept them, all my other breeding pairs have been sold off or split up and now i just help out resuce birds.

As for Hybrid birds this is something that I am very against, as Mike said we have a very small gene pool and in all honesty if it gets around that this is what you are doing I am not sure that other breeders would sell to you. I would sit back and have a think about why you want to do this.