Wonderfull Creations

I like to make foraging toys for my birds. In this instance, I'll talk about my parrots (chickens are easier by comparison!). Wild parrots spend something like 70%+ of their day foraging for food, which usually involves chewing, seeking, and even coming up with creative solutions for getting that bit of delicious treat out of a nook. In comparison, our parrots sit in our houses all day like lazy lumps and get their food given to them in a bowl. No wonder they get bored!

Anyhow, here's some cheap and easy things I do:

I use natural coffee filters, and take two of them. Wrap a few bits of pellet, or seed, or a small treat inside, and twist it up tightly like a peppermint candy wrapper. My pionus parrots love to work and chew through the paper coffee filters to get to the treat. Each one takes them about 10 minutes or less, but then they keep going back to investigate the wrapper after they are done and it keeps them busy.

I take either fresh or dry corn husks from corn that I know wasn't treated with herbicides or pesticides and either weave them together into mats or (more often) use some sisal rope to bind a bunch together, sort of like a giant cigar. Before I bind them, I hide bits of food and treats in between the husk layers. Then wrap it all tight so that my parrots have to chew it apart to get at the goodies. They love this and will work at it for hours! I imagine you could do this with the coffee filters too if you wrapped a bunch of them.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nambroth 

I like to make foraging toys for my birds. In this instance, I'll talk about my parrots (chickens are easier by comparison!). Wild parrots spend something like 70%+ of their day foraging for food, which usually involves chewing, seeking, and even coming up with creative solutions for getting that bit of delicious treat out of a nook. In comparison, our parrots sit in our houses all day like lazy lumps and get their food given to them in a bowl. No wonder they get bored!

 

Anyhow, here's some cheap and easy things I do:

 

I use natural coffee filters, and take two of them. Wrap a few bits of pellet, or seed, or a small treat inside, and twist it up tightly like a peppermint candy wrapper. My pionus parrots love to work and chew through the paper coffee filters to get to the treat. Each one takes them about 10 minutes or less, but then they keep going back to investigate the wrapper after they are done and it keeps them busy.

 

I take either fresh or dry corn husks from corn that I know wasn't treated with herbicides or pesticides and either weave them together into mats or (more often) use some sisal rope to bind a bunch together, sort of like a giant cigar. Before I bind them, I hide bits of food and treats in between the husk layers. Then wrap it all tight so that my parrots have to chew it apart to get at the goodies. They love this and will work at it for hours! I imagine you could do this with the coffee filters too if you wrapped a bunch of them.

 

 

ooh good ideas. I put a paper towel 'tent' against the cage bars and put a little blackberry under- you will have parrots scrambling in and out of it for about ten minutes lol :3

I have a blast making toys and my kiddos have fun with it too, and sometimes we take up the whole kitchen table for an entire weekend making parrot toys (great rainy day project)!

I order bits and pieces of toy parts from bird shops online, and sometimes we go down to the card and party shops here and buy bday trinkets and gift bag stuffers like chinese handcuffs, spinning tops or giant jacks (ball and jack sets), anything hard plastic and non-toxic, anything wooden that hasn't been dyed or if it has been, then with plain vegetable or food coloring dyes only.  We also look for non-tanned leather pieces, cardboard cutouts, old rolls of adding machine tape (I may have just dated myself with that one) and the baby shower section has hard plastic baby pacifiers. 

Then we weave them all together with undyed, natural twine and tie on pony beads.  I also use empty paper towel tubes and cut them and close the ends and stuff them with individually wrapped pumpkin seeds or treats for foraging.  My bird's favorite toy is a clear tube that hangs on a chain.  The tube has random holes in the sides all around it, and I take one pumpkin seed, wrap it in a cupcake wrapper tightly, and drop it into the tube.  I put several in the tube, and keep them from falling out of the bottom by wedging them in with colored straws that go thru the tube from one side to the other through the holes.  He has to pull a straw out to get one or two 'surprise wrappers' to fall out, and then he has to go and get the surprise and open it to find the treat.  GREAT activity and foraging for him.

Otherwise, what I do is take all of the stuff mentioned above and hang them on different places within the cage and on his house perches by the windows in the living room and he has a GREAT time shredding and preening everything.  A huge mess to vacuum up later, but the entertainment I personally get out of it is worth it.  He is hilarious and will hang upside down and sing while he shreds the toys.  Quite funny!