Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I've been considering getting a parrot for quite some time, but I haven't done so because of my job. As a teacher, I'm at work for 8 hours a day, and I live alone. Hence, any parrot I decided to purchase would have lots of alone time. My question is this -- is there any 'medium-sized' parrot that could handle being alone for such a long period of time with suffering from stress, feather plucking, separation-anxiety, etc.? I like Senegals and Hahn's Macaws, but I'd rather not purchase a bird if it's going to be too stressed by my schedule. Thoughts? Suggestions?

Meant to say 'without', not 'with', suffering from aforementioned stress. lol. Also, in addition to either a Hahns or Senegal, what about a Jardine? I've kept a Cockatiel for 10 years that does fine on its own for prolonged periods of time, but I suspect that smaller birds - parakeets, budgies, 'tiels - are less emotionally sensitive. Again, I'm looking to purchase a medium-sized parrot that could handle being alone during work. I'm home weekends and have school vacations and summers off.

Most of the medium size birds can be taught to tolerate alone time. The main things will be how much time you spend with them while you are there, how many toys and things to keep them entertained can you provide, keeping a consistent yet flexible schedule, etc.

If you could say spend a half hour to hour before going to work with your bird and then a couple hours in the evening then you leaving during the day shouldn't be too stressful especially if they have plenty of toys and you leave a radio or TV on for noise. In that case I would probably lean more towards the senegal or maybe one in the conure family. The macaws even mini macaws seem more stressed by alone time. Some senegals or Jardines also show stress from this but will usually become accepting if given enough quality time together when you are home.

Just make sure that when you are home you spend plenty of time interacting. Even if you are grading papers or something if you can let the bird out of the cage or at least talk with the bird while you are busy, this should help. Also keep your schedules somewhat consitent during your breaks. If during winter or summer break you spend four hours a day interacting and then you go back to school and you can only spend one hour a day this causes more stress than spending two hours every day no matter whether you are on break or not!

with the same schedule that you are going to keep. In other words, when you first get your new baby, don't spend a lot of time with him if you are not going to be able to keep spending that amount of time with him.

Give him lots of toys to play with and maybe consider leaving on a radio or television while you are gone.
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sue