Another question recently asked on Quora was “what do parrots do for fun”?
We know parrots prefer “working” for food versus simply eating from overflowing bowls of bird food blends.
We know correlation does not necessarily imply causation but can we correctly infer that work & play are one and the same for a parrot?
Children are loud, messy, and time-consuming, but every family has 2.6 of them (Pew Research).
I probably spend less time cleaning up after my eight birds in three birdcages than most moms cleaning up after 2 six-year-olds
or a single toddler
To say that all birds are time-consuming is an unsupported blanket statement.
We have a Senegal parrot and an African ringneck.
Neither is very noisy.
Thank you Constance R.
So often its important to hear from independent third parties who provide valuable feedback on our pet bird content.
Having been in the process of rescuing budgies, (current budgie census is at six) and spending a lot of time with Peaches, our Senegal parrot weighing in at about 115 g, our recent focus has been skewed towards smaller birds.
Constance has a Congo African Grey and an Umbrella Cockatoo and from her recommendations, this is going to be a cockatoo-lishish post.
Why do birds need bird toys?
So they can have fun right?
Well that’s one reason.
But the need for a bird toy goes far beyond entertainment.
Reason 1
Learning
Bird toys are to the bird cage, what leaves are to the trees your bird would be living in in the wild.
It’s said birds live by the 60/40 rule. They spend 60% of their time looking for food and 40% of their time trying not to be food. Looking for food is called foraging.
A Cockatoo parrot living in the wild will fly as many as 100 miles in a day. The bird will have several dozen stops and regular feeding places. At each stop they’ll use their strong beak (and claws) to look for food.
Pet food manufacturers as well as Internet “influencers” somehow associate the word “holistic” with “healthy” which indicates (to me) they clearly never read the definition of “holistic“.
ho·lis·tic – adjective
PHILOSOPHY – characterized by comprehension of the parts of something as intimately interconnected and explicable only by reference to the whole.
Thus from this point forward, you will go forth and snigger the next time someone tries to sell you holistic anything.
When you interact with us,
whether it be here, on our website, social media, email, or any other form of communication, we try to introduce you to holistic bird health as a way of succeeding with captive bird care – meaning:
A clear theme that emerges after reading endless threads on Facebook is “my bird won’t play with toys” – “my bird doesn’t play with toys” “my bird only wants to chew the keys off my notebook computer”.
Hi Mitch,
How are you? I hope that all is well. I have recently encountered a problem with Seymour and was wondering if you might have some ideas for me.
I usually have Seymour on the kitchen sink countertop where her toys are.
She plays there pretty much all day and clean-up is easy. As of 2 weeks ago, she has been climbing on the cabinets and chewing on the wood.
