Cheap Parrot Toys You Don’t Know You Have

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Rose Breasted Cockatoo

I will be one of the first people to complain about how expensive a lot of parrot toys are. $50 for a good macaw toy gets outrageous when you start looking at it as $50/hour! I know that’s probably how long it takes my birds to take a toy to destruction.

The good news is you don’t have to spend the big bucks for great parrot toys, there are cheap parrot toys that you don’t know you have! And they are right around your home. You just have to know what they are and what you can give your bird to play with.

Almost ALL birds love shreddable toys, anything they can destroy into pieces. I find most of my toys when I do some grocery shopping. Somehow, I have lids that don’t fit onto my Tupperware so I went out and bought a new set. Well, my new set was held together by what’s in the photo at the top of this post… which my galah, Bandit, is happily tearing apart. More photos of him here.

So instead of throwing most things you normally would away, bring your parrot out to play with them or wrap them into the cage bars so your bird has something to play with inside his cage. I usually take my birds out to check out new toys to see if there’s much of an interest first. But that part is up to you and your bird.

Rose Breasted Cockatoo

Oh, and the next time someone buys you some flowers? Share them with your bird. Parrots can have roses, the petals and the leafs. As long as you don’t mind some not so nice looking flowers… (always make sure outside things aren’t sprayed with harmful chemicals; organically grown, unsprayed things are always better and safer for your pet)

The other thing you can do is most likely you’ve already bought some bird toys for your birds, take a look at what those companies are using to make those toys and look around your home to see if you have some. Some of us have shops near by, or neighbors who cut wood for a living for projects. Use the scraps and put them on a chain for your bird. Wood pieces make great foot toys and great toys – period. You can’t go wrong with giving your bird some wood to chew on. Wood/branches on the “safe list” that haven’t been sprayed with pesticides in your area work great too, even as perches and toys. Tie a bundle of them together with some string and hang it in the cage for your parrot to play with.

Congo African Grey Parrot

You can see pretty clearly what this toy Cressi has is made of. It’s a free foot toy a company threw in my order for being so loyal with using them. One of the things on it is a clothes pin. It doesn’t have the metal part that would make it function, it’s just the piece of wood so if you have some of those you can take the metal spring off and use it as a foot toy for your bird.

Some other things you can give your bird to play with that you might not know about:

• Pine cones (I walk across the street for mine)
• Bark from a pine tree
• Coconut
• Shells
• Your newest origami invention for that math class (after you’re graded on it)
• Graded homework