5 DIY Foraging Toys For Parrots
If you are like me you would much rather use things around your house than going out to the store every time your small parrot needs a new foraging toy.
Here are some simple cheap foraging toy ideas
- Food bowl with hay
- Food bowl with beads/wooden blocks
- Egg cartons
- Covering food dish with paper
- Treats in cupcake liners
- Paper over food
- Rolled up paper balls with seeds
Foraging is crucial to keeping your bird as happy and healthy as possible, these toys can often be expensive when purchased from a pet store. These are some easy, quick and cheap ways to get your bird foraging.
Adding items like hay, beads, or wooden toy parts into your bird’s pellet or seed mix in their dish is a great way to slow them down and get them moving objects to get their food and foraging more than they would if their food was just dumped in a dish.
Egg cartons are a fantastic option and one of my bird’s favourites. You simply break the carton into the cups, open sides touching and put treats or meals in the cup. Which makes the bird have to chew the cups to get their head in there or have to move the cups to get a bite.
Covering your food dish with paper is a great option because it gets your bird ripping and tearing to get their food, this makes eating their food takes longer and is more enriching and similar to what they would do in nature. This is one of the best ways to introduce your bird to the idea of foraging.
Cupcake liners are great for little birds. Putting UNWAXED/GLOSSY cupcake liners together like the egg cartons. This is a great introduction to the egg cartons if the egg cartons are too complex for your bird at this time. The cupcake liners are light and very easy for small birds to rip and shred, which we want to encourage! This is one of the key reasons why we want to encourage our birds to forage!
These last two foraging toys are ways for complete beginner foraging birds specifically small birds to gain confidence with foraging.
Placing a piece of paper on top of a treat on the floor is fantastic because the bird can see there is something under there and they have to think about how to get the piece of paper off, that could be by chewing it or by moving the piece of paper or simply going under the paper.
This next one is the simplest on this whole list so if you have tried the other options and thought none of these are working this one is for you. On a dish, plate, clean floor put some seeds, pellets, treats whatever you use to encourage foraging, then ball up little pieces of paper (present tissue paper is very lightweight and small for extra small birds) then mix it all up. This is a perfect place to start and what I used to get my bird into foraging.
Foraging for small parrots is so tricky. There is not a lot of information for small parrot owners out there, so I am going to share this information with you so that you can understand how to help our little feathered friends forage just like the bigger feathered friends. The key is to start very simple something that is beyond easy to rip and shred and get into this builds your birds’ confidence and makes them want to try harder foraging tasks and materials.
Most small budgies, cockatiels, conures etc. don’t find satisfaction in breaking up wood to get to a treat because wood is very hard and difficult for their little beak. Honestly, wood toys for little birds are pretty advanced, to begin with, so I would avoid them until your bird is shredding egg cartons and cardboard-like it is nothing.
Why is foraging so important?
Foraging is what a bird spends 40%-75% of its time foraging in a single day (according to the association of avian veterinarians foraging.pdf (ymaws.com)). When living in your home your bird gets a very easy life, eat out of a dish with no challenge. This gives birds so much free time, this can cause a bird that gets into everything, screams and plucks etc. If you want to give your bird the optimal life even for small parrots foraging is an essential part of their life and the care you should be providing.