I think a air price is under $900 for Red bellied macaws if and big IF they 
are papilloma free. A lot came in a few years ago that contracted papillomas. 
As one theory on this is that papillomas are a visual symptom of prior 
pachecos then this is not desirable.
A friend sold her RBM's last year for $650 for the pair and now I wish I had 
gotten them. I think I paid about $500 two years ago forone pair and about 
$850 or $900 for the other pair. Both pair have had babies for me this year 
but I just entered the purchase agreement on the 2d pair. So not bad on a 
proven pair that I took to the vet and cleaned up myself. Someone here has a 
pair for sale for $1500 but we think this is too much and are not sure about 
the fellow anyway. No-one seems to know anything about him or the birds.
RBM's are different. They make an obnoxious sound if wild caught and a cute 
kinda chuckle if domestic babies. We have three in our living room, 1 born in 
April and "his" sibling born in June and a kid from pr #2 born in June also.
We still need to get them sexed. They are still handfeeding beleive it or 
ot.
A lady I sell to in W Va says she is still feeding one the same age. She 
called me to see when they wean! I couldn't tell her. At least they are only 
feeding one time a day.
Anyway, about different: they don't get the yellow face until they are 
sexually mature. They are highly stressed animals and I think they get 
someting in the food they eat in the wild that we can't give them (yet) that 
helps them out.
They live in swamps and nest in swamp palms called "mauritia flexuosa" or the 
buriti palm. You can almost never get it here. They almost exclusively eat 
the fruit from it. According to Howard Voren, who recently wrote an article 
in Bird Breeder about these guys, the buriti palm fruit is very low in fat 
and cholesterol. The closest thing we have is a true red spanish yam. One 
pair of ours will eat this (or anything) and the other pair eats nothing good 
for them.
They need exercise. Rosemary Low says a 50 ft flight but as we are definitely 
not indepenently wealthy one pair has a 6X8x12ft flight outdoors. Pr #2 bred 
in a 3X3X4ft cage but now that they're ours we're gonna try them in a 4X4X6ft 
cage
still outdoors. Not as large but it's the best we have for now. Gonna out our 
Severes in the same type.
These are great birds for a conservation effort.
The hard thing about them is the high stress, and they have to be fat enough 
to survive even a FL winter and fit or thin enough to breed successfully. We 
think a lower fat diet if possible, such as Prety bird Amazon lite, and other 
stuff.
We fed Nedderlands seed mixtures including their sunburst large which is 
pretty much like Kaytee fiesta for macaws, a pelleted "crumble" by a co. 
called Scarlett (Moyers) and Protein 25 which is like CeDe' or Quicko. We 
think  this helps somehow. It works with small birds like budgies and tiels 
so we give it to all the large birds too. Also F&V as tolerated. Remember any 
carbohydrates not burned off convert to fat to be stored (my own diet 
problem..)
I am probably sexing these guys soon and keeping a pairif theres one, and 
probably selling the odd fellow to a girl who's wanted one forever. They also 
seem to sell well, I guess because they are unusual. Howard told me he sells 
them for about $800 each.
Keep in touch if you remain interested in RBM's.
Barbara
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