How to make parrot toys for beginners

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. If you own a parrot, you know how fast they go through the parrot toys. 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, I will cover some tips of how to make parrot toys for beginners.

First thing first, you must make parrot toys that are suitable for your parrots. Size is one consideration. For large parrots like african grey parrots, make a parrot toy that is more resistant as these large birds have powerful beaks that can destroy a parrot toy if it is small and fragile. Also, do consider the size of your parrot cage. Don't make a parrot toy that is too big to fit into your cage. You can make use of the cage's feature to get ideas on how to make parrot toys.

As you are making parrot toys, remember the basic principles. Parrots like to chew on toys and play with them, usually to it’s total destruction; an untouched parrot toy is not being enjoyed and might as well be removed.

Make parrot toys with wood
Parrots like to poke and peak at wood so a wood based parrot toy is most ideal for your pet. When choosing 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. Some safe woods are: Pine, Maple, Apple, Arbutus, Aspen, Beech, Birch, Cactus, Cottonwood, Crabapple, Dogwood, Elm, Hawthorn, Larch, Manzanita, Ash, Poplar, Willow, Ribbonwood, Grapevine wood. Warning: Never use pressure treated woods or Oak.

Make parrot toys with paper
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. What you can do next is to remove the glue and cut them into small slices. 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. For example, you can add ice cream sticks.

Another simple paper parrot toy you can make is to create paper based baskets. You can hide dried fruits and veggies in the toys so that your parrots will have a pleasant surprise when they are poking at the paper basket. Paper is really a flexible material. What you can do with it is entirely dependent on your imagination.

Make parrot toys with rope
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. Ensure that whichever model you choose, the materials are 100% cotton as it is safe for parrots when they incidentally digest it. Any alternatives are not considered bird safe. When making rope parrot toys, make sure all the frayed ends are trimmed so that your bird does not get caught.

Here is one idea for a rope based parrot toy. Find a rope and cut it to 36 inch lengths. You need to them knot them at the top. After which, you can insert a quick link between the lengths of the material, just below the knot. Starting at the quick link, tightly tied about six inches of the three lengths of material. Finally, make a strong knot at the end of the braid to complete the parrot toy.

Doing this creates a good structure to hang the rest of the stuff. Find some large plastic blocks and tied to the three lengths of material that are left hanging. You then need to knot the ends off tightly so that your parrot will not untie the knot and loosen the plastic blocks.

Make parrot toys with leather
The final materials I recommend for making parrot toys is leather. 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 making parrot toys.