Safe materials for homemade budgie and cockatiel toys

[Duck_feeder]

I'm looking to make my own toys and play gym for my budgies and cockatiel (and eventually conures, amazons, african greys, macaws, etc when I expand my flock).

I'm trying to determine what materials are safe to use.

I'll only be using stainless steel for metal parts (avoiding nickel and zinc due to toxicity for birds)
I'm only using natural fibers for string and rope
Any plastic will not be soft are brittle to prevent breaking off parts and swallowing them.
Coloring will be done with only food coloring. No paint or toxic dyes.

I'm stuck on what wood I can use. I have a list of safe trees I can use branches from, but I don't want to use branches and twigs for all of their toys. Does anybody know what processed woods are safe? I know particle board and plywood are definitely no good due to the adhesives used. Same with weather treated woods as chemicals are often introduced to prevent rotting.

Does anybody know if I can use dowel rods and planks of wood? Any way to tell if they've been treated with chemicals?

 

[Melissakins]

The planks should be fine so long as they're not treated wood. Dowels? Lots of perches you buy from pet stores or even bird specialty stores are dowels. We have a toy for one of the macaws that utilizes two different sized dowels - it's a puzzle toy that they have to chew through to get the surprise (what we call Rooster snacks - he crows like a rooster)

We've been using more natural wood, like grape vine for perches etc. The parrotlets aren't big chewers and have twig type perches and a few dowels too in addition to some plastic chain that they crawl/pull themselves along. The macaws are different as night and day - Cookie isn't big into toys unless they're puzzle toys and Curley has a penchant for chewing on anything.

Leather (vegetable tanned only!) strips from bird supply stores are fun things to hang and weave thru their bars and to tie beads/toy parts onto,

Dragon wood/manzanita is a popular perch wood source

Pine - untreated is fine - this is a great soft wood that you can cut into many many shapes/sizes and food coloring works great on it to dye it. You can color it then bake it on LOW in your oven to dry. There's a company that makes spools, knobs, decorative unfinished wood pieces that sells boxes of these by the pound for you to make into bird toys - They're already pre-drilled for threading onto leather or cotton rope. Neat Neat Neat stuff.

Branches from a butterfly bush are great to chew on and are bird safe.

Bamboo is good stuff - also makes great perches (splinters though)

Bottle brush also makes a great perch and a great branch to chew on.

 

[Duck_feeder]

Quote:
Do you remember the name of the company? Sounds like a perfect source of wood!

Thanks for all the ideas! I think we already own just about every bird toy available from pet stores (our ducks play with them too) so we need to look into homemade ones with keep our flock from getting bored.

 

[Melissakins]

We started out buying our toys, but after 10 years, that can get expensive

So we started making them

I also buy brown lunch bags and pop small amounts of corn in them (no oil) and twist the open end up and braid through the bars of the cages for them to forage on their own. Or stuff bits of paper towel or piece of cotton cloth and a treat such as a nut or a piece of fruit like a grape in the bag - gives them something to figure out

the name of the site is: http://www.caseyswood.com/

We'd buy these: http://www.caseyswood.com/shoppingc...ex&cPath=301&zenid=lc9a0rmo4ih5a12f79mjck9ni6

ETA - they have a selection specifically for birds too in bulk in 5 and 20 lb increments.

 

[Duck_feeder]

thanks again for the info, our birds thank you!