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Making Parrot Toys Beginners

September 25th, 2009

I will talk 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. Parrots tend to destroy the toys they are play with. 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. Another factor to keep in mind is thethe size of your parrot cage. Take care not to making a parrot that is too small for the cage as you will wasting your time and efforts in doing so.

List of materials 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 create some interesting parrot toys. In the market, there are several different models of rope that you can buy 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.

Parrots like to poke and peak at wood so a wood based parrot toy is most ideal for 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. Before beginning, you will need some rolls of paper towels. They are the flexible to work with. The next step is to, create a hole into the slides so that they can be string together with a rope. Once that is done, you can do a lot of things with it including hanging lots of interesting materials between the paper towels to create variety for your parrot toys.

The final materials I recommend for making parrot toys is leather. As leather is less common, you might need to spend more time looking for a cheaper source. 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.

A Guide To Safe Material Selection For Parrot Toys

September 25th, 2009

It is not easy to select parrot toys.The range of toys is very wide, from rope ladders to plastic covers. You have to find parrot toy that are safe for your birds. Knowing what is the right toy for your parrots can be a trial and error process but hopefully this materials guide can shed more light. In particular, it will provide information on what kind of materials are best for parrot toys.

Parrots, by nature, loves to fly around and look for food. They are also clever creatures that need constant entertainment to keep them from being bored. Therefore, it is important to remember that even when you keep them as pets, they are always entertained, through the use of toys. While many bird owners might think parrot toys are just playthings, they are actually quite essential to parrots. Unfortunately, these bird toys sometimes have harmful materials and you need to know which types to avoid.

It is a well known fact that parrots like shiny materials. However, not all metals are suitable as parrot toys. Specifically, pick only those where the metal is either nickel- plated or stainless steel. Avoid other metals such Zinc and copper plated metal parts because they are dangerous to parrots and when ingested, can result in death.

Besides metal, you must note the type of leather used in the parrot toys. In particular, the leather must be vegetable tanned and free of chemicals. This is because parrots like to chew on stuff more than anything else. They can literally spend hours just pecking and choking at the leather. If you are not careful, the parrots can accidental swallow some of the leather, which might contain chemicals that cause illness and possibly death to your birds. Also, do not keep leather based parrot toys that have been soiled by the parrots. This is because bacteria can grow on the soiled leather and cause illness to the birds when swallow.

You might think that wood is a safe material but this is where you are wrong. There are several types of wood that are unsafe for parrots such as oak. It is better to choose parrot toys that are made of pine, poplar, java or manzanita as these wood types are safe for chewing.

The final material to consider in this guide is ropes. For rope based toys, do remember to keep the toe nails of your birds short to prevent the nails from getting caught in the ropes and causing injuries to themselves.When choosing such toys, keep in mind to trim your parrots’ toe nails as this will avoid your birds from getting injured as a result of the nails getting trap in the role. Also avoid long ropes as there are many cases where parrots died by getting caught in the ropes and hang themselveChoose only cotton or sisal ropes because they have not been chemically treated and hence will be safe for parrots chewing on them.

In summary, try to avoid any chemical treated materials. In fact, it is recommended to buy toys which are labeled “100% Organic.” So, keep them in mind when shopping for your parrot toys.