Homemade Bird Toys (How to)

[Eggnog101]

Hello, I've been making homemade bird toys for my parrot Apollo, and thought I would put a little how to thing up here.




Rope Swing

You will need:
String (Colorful)

instructions: Get about nine pieces of your string, and tie them together. Take three strings from one side and pull them together into one strand, do the same to the other side and middle. Make at thick, long braid. at the end of the braid, tie a knot like you did at the begining.hang up in cage.

Your bird will (Hopefully) Try to unbraid the string. Unless it's like Apollo, who uses it to swing from one side of the cage to another. (Or does a backflip with it)

Durability Level: **** Four stars, Apollo hasn't been able to tear up one of these yet!





Apollo, looking evil

 

[Eggnog101]

Treat Tube

You will need: Toilet Paper tube, or paper towel tube, foam, paper, or felt, tape.


Instructions: Take paper towel tube and tape one end of it closed. Now take at least two types of their favorite crunchy snack and cut it into relatively small pieces. Place all of the pieces into the tube. Take the other end and tape a piece of foam/paper/felt to it, make sure to only tape most of it down, let a little hole still be there. Place it on the floor of your birds cage.


Your bird will (Hopefully) toss this around his cage, shake it, etc. until some treats fall out of it. However, a lot of birds (Including mine) Will just bite the foam/paper/felt until it rips, and grab the treat inside. (Mine ripped open both sides of the tube.)



Durability Level: * 1 Star, Apollo ripped this up about ten minutes after starting to play with it.

SAFETY WARNING: Not all birds do this, but some birds might. Your bird, when playing with this toy, might eat the foam/felt/paper. I highly doubt it, most birds would know it isn't food, but some might eat it.

 

[Lophura]

You can never go wrong with TP & paper towel rolls, perhaps the best and most readily available toy in the world - and affordable!! I also like the fridge-size 12 packs boxes, cut a hole on one end (already one where you got your pop out off) and the animals you have a ready made destroyable-tunnel.

Dan

 

[Lophura]

Here's another idea that I let the kids in our camps and workshops do, they either keep them or donate them for our parrots to "destroy". The black & white template posted first first should be to scale, if not, my e-mail is my signature. My son and I always make a few test birds before the activity, all of them end up as enrichment for birds, chinchillas, degus, rabbits, bunnies, and our resident rooster even likes to peck them around (reptiles are a little more wary, but I have a snake and two geckos that must investigate them).

First off is the blank template:




Here's one that was one our completed examples. The colors on this was pre-filled on the pc to be more vivid for the class, was never used with animals due to the who-know-what's-in-it HP ink!!



If you have kids, they are fun to make and don't have to be hummingbirds. My son prefers making Ivory-billed Woodpeckers!! I have kids in my classes that trim or even cut the cut to be parrot like to match one of our birds or I encourage them to make one that we observed on our counts (we spent an hour each camp on a hike counting species). Shameless plug for those who may be in MO/KS that would want to see us - http://www.animalwonders.net/ - still ironing out the summer public event schedule.

If these templates don't work for you or match the size, send me an e-mail and I can forward it too you.

Edited to add this photo of the kids working on them:

 

[Eggnog101]

Here's another idea that I let the kids in our camps and workshops do, they either keep them or donate them for our parrots to "destroy". The black & white template posted first first should be to scale, if not, my e-mail is my signature. My son and I always make a few test birds before the activity, all of them end up as enrichment for birds, chinchillas, degus, rabbits, bunnies, and our resident rooster even likes to peck them around (reptiles are a little more wary, but I have a snake and two geckos that must investigate them).

First off is the blank template:




Here's one that was one our completed examples. The colors on this was pre-filled on the pc to be more vivid for the class, was never used with animals due to the who-know-what's-in-it HP ink!!



If you have kids, they are fun to make and don't have to be hummingbirds. My son prefers making Ivory-billed Woodpeckers!! I have kids in my classes that trim or even cut the cut to be parrot like to match one of our birds or I encourage them to make one that we observed on our counts (we spent an hour each camp on a hike counting species). Shameless plug for those who may be in MO/KS that would want to see us - http://www.animalwonders.net/ - still ironing out the summer public event schedule.

If these templates don't work for you or match the size, send me an e-mail and I can forward it too you.

Edited to add this photo of the kids working on them:

Thanks for the template, I'm sure Apollo will enjoy ripping it up xD Your birds are gorgeous!