Home made playstand for pet parrots

We get the most innovative, creative people posting on our facebook page for BirdTricks.com. If you aren’t over there already, please take a peak and join us!

One of those people is Vince and his fiance Jen. Vince was constantly posting photos of his supplies and progress while he attempted to make a playstand for his parrots. All the ones in the market nowadays are so expensive, and being able to “do it yourself” really appeals to people right now when you can do it at home for much, much less, and feel great about something you designed and built!

So I asked Vince for some photos, instructions and everything he could give me so that I could publish a blog on his home made parrot stand so that the rest of us can learn a thing or two and start making our own for less!

First off, get to know the maker…

Jen (my fiance) and I are getting married June 24th, 2012 and can’t wait! We have three birds; a sun conure aka “Jeremy”, a gold cap conure aka “Little foot”, and an African gray parrot aka “Grecey”. We got Jeremy first at a pet store; she was all alone. She came right out for me and we knew she was the one. Little foot we got at another pet store… she was only about 6 months when we got her. We walked by her cage and she was playing and we fell in love. We never thought we would get another bird but we did Grecey was only 3 months when we saw her. Yes, as a baby we fell in love and had to get her. We would go down and see her everyday. On the weekends we would spend all day with her. I saw the play stand online and kept looking at it for about a year… when I found the more detailed photos I knew I had to build it.

Here is what you will need to make your very own parrot playstand:

- 3/4 PVC piping (between 80-110 feet)

- 10 elbow 90′s

- 6 caps

- 6 4-ways

- 1 special 3-way

- 77  T’s

- LOTS of colored vet tape

Photo by Dave
Location: Waynesboro, VA
Playing: Camelot macaw “Comet”

Recently someone on our facebook asked how to get their bird who never ever plays, to play so that he wouldn’t look so bored all the time.

Remember… in the wild, birds aren’t bored because they’ve gotta work for their food all day long, finding it, eating it, storing it, sharing it, playing with it, fighting over it…

In captivity we give them a food dish and the rest of the day to think about the meaning of life.

The best thing you can do for a bird who refuses to play is get them to play by foraging. There’s a great DVD out there called Captive Foraging. I highly recommend it, it’s amazing and works within a budget!

It teaches you how to use household items to encourage your bird to forage (and play) for that food you would normally just give it in a food dish. No more food dishes for your bird – it’s foraging now!

This will knock boredom on the head and out the door. Once a bird learns to forage, it learns to play and you can start getting more and more creative as will your bird – and begin enjoying the challenging tasks that lay ahead of him every day.

Umbrella cockatoo Linus, and me

In the last 15 or 20 years, scientists came to the conclusion that birds are intelligent. More recently, they have considered avian intelligence to be in line with that of the primates. Of course, we bird enthusiasts could have told them this all along, and saved them countless hours and dollars spent in research and studies. But what do we know? We only live with them.
My birds have me in a constant state of amazement with the things they come up with to modify their environments, find solutions to problems or to simply entertain themselves. They learn by watching and take that knowledge and add their unique personal touch to create something new.

Umbrella cockatoo, Linus and Dave

Linus, my umbrella cockatoo, is very task oriented. He will assign himself a chore and spend the entire day, if necessary, to accomplish it. I have come home from work on several occasions to find splintered pieces from his wood toys jammed into every conceivable crevice in his cage. Sometimes he will unfurl an entire roll of adding machine tape and meticulously layer the bottom of his cage, covering every inch of available space. Sometimes he undoes his quick links and places each hanging toy neatly on his shelf perch in the corner of his cage. This is a bird that always finds something to do. The poster child for independent play.
His very favorite activity is pulling his lightweight cage cover inside of the cage and artistically arranging it. Nearly every day I come home to find it in the same configuration: woven into about 12″ of the cage bars, then wrapped about six times around a perch and finally the end is threaded through the hole in a screw eye at the end of the perch. (A screw eye is a closed metal ring that is attached to a screw. They are the things used to hang potted plants from the ceiling, or maybe, in our case, a hanging playgym.)
He has been doing this forever. Every night, when it’s time to cover him up for bed, I have to slowly pull the length of fabric so that it slides through the screw eye, and unwinds from the perch and through the cage bars without it get caught on anything. Sometimes there’s a tug of war as he tries to prevent me from dismantling that which took him so long to engineer.

Umbrella cockatoo

One night at bedtime, as I prepared to ruin his day’s efforts, I felt resistance from the end of the fabric and I wasn’t able to pull it through the screw eye. Linus watched very carefully as I pulled and pulled without success. I opened the cage to find a knot at the very end. I stood there with my mouth hanging open, contemplating that my bird had managed to tie a knot. (Meanwhile, Linus excused himself from the cage and took refuge in one of the kitchen cabinets).
I was shocked, but decided that it had to have been a fluke because, surely, a parrot could never prepare a knot. As it turned out I was right. Never again did I see a knot at the end of the cage cover fabric. Instead, what I found the next night was equally as astounding. Linus had bitten a hole in the fabric and jammed a piece of wood into the hole, once again preventing me from pulling apart his creation. This happened again the next night and the nights following that, until the fabric became too shredded to hold anything he pushed into it.

Umbrella cockatoo

My brilliant bird had discovered from watching ONE TIME, that something placed at the end of the fabric that was larger than the hole in the screw eye would stop me from unraveling his masterpiece. He also discovered, as an added bonus, that he was able to escape every time I had to open the cage to remove his obstruction. How’s THAT for a lesson in avian intelligence?

Rosebreasted cockatoo

Q: Yesterday I was in a parrot shop and the owner suggested that there are actually preferable ways to layout a birds cage.  Is this true?
- Michelle Rae & Cheeky

A: There are definitely preferred ways to set up your bird’s cage and there are many considerations to take into account. The most important aspects of your bird’s inside-the-cage environment are safety, security, opportunities for physical activity and the provision of engaging mental stimulation for periods of confinement. A cage should never be set up to suit the aesthetic wants of the owner. It must provide for your bird’s needs factoring in the following:

PHYSICAL AND MENTAL STIMULATION:
I find one of the hardest things to communicate to a soft-hearted bird owner is that, as much as we want to make life the ultimate in comfort and ease for our companion parrots, it is not a good idea.
I have asked many people to go outside and witness the activity levels of the wild birds in their yards. Birds are seldom still. They are hopping and climbing from branch to branch even when it seems without purpose. Whether they are flying, playing or foraging, they are in perpetual motion. We have to provide for and encourage this same level of activity for our birds inside (and out of) their cages.
For this reason, if you have a parrot that has a favorite perching spot and rarely ventures to the other side of the cage, you will want to put his food and entertainment in a spot where he must climb or fly to it. If the built in feeding stations in the cage don’t allow for this, get dishes from the pet store that attach to the cage bars and allow placement where it will most benefit your bird. Any trainer will assure you that birds enjoy working for their meals.

Blue fronted amazon

Try to remember, also, that there doesn’t need to be a perch near every destination spot in his cage. I try to place some favored toys in areas that are difficult to get to with the idea of increasing the physical challenge. Once there, your bird will need to grasp of the bars in order to play with the toy, all the while stretching and reaching. Your bird will not think you are mean and inconsiderate if you do this. In fact, this challenge will be a source of mental stimulation for your bird as well as helping to keep him physically fit. Convenience breeds laziness.
If you have a handicapped or geriatric bird, cage perching can be placed in a way that encourages activity at a different level. A friend who takes handicapped birds into her rescue builds padded ramps and other clever devices that keep the birds moving and striving towards some goal.

Blue throated macaw

SAFETY:
Toys and perches should be placed keeping in mind your bird’s wingspan. Caged birds often flap their wings vigorously inside their cages as a form of exercise and to expend excess energy. Some smaller birds will fly from location to location in their cages. There should be spaciousness inside the cage allowing this activity without there being a concern for injury.
Bird cages, in general, are not well designed. Most cages are taller than they are wide, and since birds typically prefer higher perching, there is a great deal of wasted space toward the bottom.Try to utilize this space by bringing preferred toys and foods to lower levels. Climbing is great exercise.
I hope it goes without saying that EVERYTHING that goes into your bird’s cage should be investigated from a safety standpoint. If it looks like it might pose a danger, it does.

SECURITY:
The cage is your bird’s home. Unfortunately, it is wide open on all sides, providing little privacy and virtually no hiding places for a prey animal. Think about that. A creature that has the innate understanding that he is considered lunch by another creature will have the tendency to be in high alert mode always. Some birds take this more seriously than others. For those in my flock that might overreact to the goings on in the house, I provide a place for them to retreat to when they feel stressed. This can be in a covered corner of the cage or behind a large toy. It’s up to you to understand your particular bird’s needs in that area.

Bluethroated macaw

OTHER CONSIDERATIONS:
The locking mechanism on my quaker’s feeder doors no longer work. In order to avoid an escape, I have chained them shut (which has actually opened up some cool toy hanging possibilities). Quakers are notoriously known for their cage territorialism, especially during the spring and fall. This means that I run the risk of being nipped when I reach into the cage, even when delivering the yummiest treats. I have placed a food bowl on the inside of the door so that I can open the door and put the bowl in the ring from outside the cage. This has saved us both a lot of aggravation.
With that same idea in mind, people that have trouble retrieving their birds from the cage might consider putting a perch on the door. The bird can be targeted to the perch and the door opened, so that the step up will actually take place outside of the cage.
Finally, common sense will tell you not to place a perch above anything you do not want to be soiled, such as food and water dishes or toys that cannot be washed, such as shredders.

Military macaw

You can always tell where your bird’s favorite settling spots are. They will always right above the biggest piles of poop. Try to lure your bird away from these places with fun activities and food. Make sure the path to these things requires climbing or flight. Humans are not the only species to get lazy and overweight! Your bird will be much healthier as his activities increase and his time will be better occupied.

There were a couple of things that I should have elaborated on in my last post, one of them is this question.

A preening toy, preener toy, or simply a preener is an object that is made of materials that can be preened by a bird.  Just as a bird will preen its mate’s feathers, or its own, or groom your hair, it will spend hours working on the strands in the many varieties of preener toys.  Pretty much, it is any toy that satisfies that need.

These are preening toys:

But, so is this:

The one thing they all have in common is that they have dangley parts that a bird will sweep its beak over simulating a preening action.  This seems to keep some birds from over-working their own feathers if they are so inclined.

Different birds have different preference when it comes to the materials that they like to preen.

Cloth toys as well as rope toys and perches fray easily and can serve as a preener for your bird.  HOWEVER, it is important to note, and I didn’t say this in my last post, that toes, necks and other body parts get entangled easily in frayed cloth or rope.  Anything frayed is, in fact, dangerous to keep in your bird’s cage without supervision.

Rope perches that have frayed over time can be cut back with scissors to a safe length.  Since a frayed edge of cloth can become dangerously long in just a matter of hours, it should not be left in the cage with a determined bird.  My vet had to amputate her own cockatoo’s toe after in became entangled in fray from her cage cover.

Fabric, however, seems to be a favorite material to many parrots and as long as safety is in the forefront of everyone’s mind it can make an enticing, and inexpensive toy.  A wet, or better yet frozen, facecloth can offer a lot of comfort and fun to a parrot in the summertime.  As always, be smart and think through potential dangers before you give ANY toys to your bird.

r

Q: My friend says that I shouldn’t get a mirror for my cockatiel because he will become infatuated with the “bird in the mirror” and want nothing to do with me.  Is this true?
Sharon M., Waterford, WI

A:  In a word, no. Cockatiels do love their own reflections and will spend a lot of  time staring at and singing to “the bird in the mirror”. Mine do, and I have never experienced my relationship suffering with any of my birds because of mirrors.

It is a bit difficult to understand a bird’s relationship to its reflection. There is really nothing in nature, besides water, that is so highly reflective that a bird could see itself. It would have to be a very still day for a bird to be able to recognize its reflection in a pond, and I have never read that anyone has observed this behavior in a wild bird. So why are so many enamored with their reflections in captivity?

It has been the subject of scientific study whether a bird recognizes the image in the mirror as itself.  Scientists believe that dolphins do recognize themselves and suspect that birds do as well. I know my umbrella cockatoo, Linus, recognizes his own reflection simply by the fact that he doesn’t try to attack it. However, my quaker gets aggressive when anything refective goes into his cage, including stainless steel bowls. Theo, my goffins cockatoo, sleeps cuddles up next to her stainless steel mirror, and lately I have watched her holding a corner in her foot and manipulating the image behind her. Very clever.

We may never have the answers to the questions this topic brings to mind. The bottom line is that if it makes your bird happy and there are no unwanted behaviors resulting from it, there’s no reason to disallow this form of entertainment.

Blue Fronted Amazon Parrot

Be very sure to select mirrors that are appropriate for your bird’s size. For the small birds, budgies and cockatiels, try Hall Of Mirrors. It’s a three sided mirror that gives multi images and is safe for their bite pressure.  My cockatiels love it so much I had to order another so they each had their own.  For any bird larger, conures on up to macaws, only use stainless steel mirrors for safety reasons.  NEVER use glass of any kind in your bird’s cage.  This includes hand-held and compact mirrors.