hi, my name is madeline franco and we're hereto talk about birds, specifically, in this segment we're going to talk about toys andhow you might be able to make some simple toys yourself from everyday household items,generally speaking. when we think of parrots in the wild, we like to remember the sixtyforty rule. parrots in the wild spend about sixty percent of their time looking for foodand forty percent of their time trying not to be food. let's focus on the sixty percent.because we have put them int he homes, our parrots don't get to look for their food asthey would in the wild. so foraging toys really come in handy as a way to keep your bird busy,engaged, and interested. to many people, this hear looks like a spent water bottle. however,with a little attention, ingenuity, and a
few moments of your time, and dropping a fewpeanuts and a couple of other things. i've got in here a little toy made out of straws,some clothespins which the birds like to chew on, and i'm going drop a few peanuts in there.and, you put that in your birds cage because he can see that there's something in therethat looks interesting. many of the larger birds, and believe it or not, even some ofthe smaller ones because this is fairly thin plastic, it's also food grade so it's nothingharmful. they will start to chip away at this and they will get to the toys and the peanutsinside. it's very inexpensive and it's an inexpensive toy that also helps you to reuseand recycle. other simple toys consists of pine cones, which you can take off a favoritelocal pine tree, or you can them, and birds
seem to like to play with those. they preenthem and sculpt them. they're a lot of fun for them. and even just the caps of the bottle.these make great foot toys for some of your larger birds. they'll hold them and chip awayat them, and pretty soon there'll be nothing left to them. these here are some jacks. particularlysmall birds that are just learning to use their beaks, these are plastic jacks, theycan use these. a bird using it's beak as a way to sense things and to discover it's world.so, even among baby birds, if you throw a few of these in the enclosure, they're goingto start mouthing these. they're going to start working with them and it teaches themto teach their beak to grip. you may have seen these, these are decorative balls, ibuy the natural ones, they're made out of
reed. you can force a couple of peanuts intothe center of them. sometimes they're so small and the peanut is so big you can only getone into them. and this becomes a toy that your bird might like to play with. you canput a little peanut butter on the tip of the popsicle stick and that becomes a treat andalso a toy to shred after it's finished. you can take a simple, readily available paperbag, open it up, get some shredded paper, put some in there, make a toy out of thesestraws, you take about four or five straws, tie them together with another straw. youenjoying that? make it nice and tight. it's just something, some sort of surprise forthe bird to find in the bag. and, if i put anything foreign in my birds cages, they usuallyknow there's a treat inside if i put a container
in, anything like that. you can use variousthings to contain treats and surprises. you can even use small personal sized pizza boxes.you can make holes in them with a paper puncher, you can weave leather through the holes. andyou just put that in there, put some sticks, put a few nuts, maybe a couple of these jacks,and some nuts, and you fasten that together. you can either tie the knot tight or not tight,and you just put that in your bird's cage and the bird will go and pick after it. avery simple toy can be made from wooden spoons. you can actually just give your bird a woodenspoon. for a moluccan, this constitutes a toy. for other birds you can actually putan eye hook in the top and you can tie pieces of cloth, and string, and rope, and beads,and all sorts of things. so, the spoon just
provides the infrastructure for whatever youwant to attach to it. but, birds love wooden spoons. particularly the large birds. theywould, wooden spoons and paint stirrers.