How To Make Parrot Toys

September 13, 2009 by fts  
Filed under Keeping Pet Birds

This post is about how to make parrot toys for beginners. Making parrot toys is both a fun exercise as well as being able to save you money from buying commercial parrot toys. A parrot can go through parrot toys like a hot knife through butter. If you need to keep on buying the toys as replacement, you are going to spend quite a large sum of money. So, instead of doing that, here are some tips of how to make parrot toys for beginners.

Before making a parrot toy, you must first know the characteristic of your parrot. Size is one consideration. Big birds tend to have stronger beaks so you need to make parrot toys that are stronger and more resistant. Also, do consider the size of your parrot cage. Don’t make a parrot toy that is too big to fit into your cage.

Below are four materials suitable to make parrot toys

Rope is quite critical for making parrot toys. They are useful material to hang stuff and you will probably need a few of these to help you make some good parrot toys. When buying the materials for making parrot toys, you can choose from several different types of rope, of which solid braided rope and twisted rope are the most popular. One important point to highlight is that you should choose a 100% cotton rope as it is safe for parrots when they incidentally digest it. Any alternatives are not considered bird safe. Also, make sure that all the frayed ends of your parrot toys are trimmed to avoid your parrots from being caught by the fringes.

Wood is another material that will be popular with your pet. When buying wooden materials to make your parrot toys, ensure that you buy bird safe products. This is because your parrots may ingest some the wood that it is chewing on. The important point is never to buy painted or lacquered wood parts (certain paints/lacquers contain zinc and other harmful chemicals/additives) as the chemicals can be deadly to your birds.

Paper is a relatively easy and abundant material to work with. In fact, using paper to make parrot toys is the most easy way for beginners. First , you will need paper towel rolls. They are the easiest to work with. Then, punch a hole into the slides so that they can be string together with a rope. The great thing about this parrot toy is that you can have the option of putting lots of interesting materials between the paper towels to create variety for your parrot toys.

Finally, you can also use leather as another candidate for making parrot toys. Leather is not as common as the other materials so you might need to shop around and find a place that has the right type of leather. There are various widths and thickness of vegetable tanned leather strips. Be sure to purchase what is most suitable for your bird and the size of the hole that is drilled. The important thing is to ensure the leather has not been treated with any chemicals or dyes to prevent poisoning if you parrot accidentally swollen it.

These are all I have for you. Now, it is your turn to go and have fun making parrot toys.