How many of you provide foraging toys for your birds? There are a number of lines available (Nature's Instinct, StarBird, Jungle Talk to mention a few).

Are there any in particular that your fids really love? If so, please list the type of bird and the toy or toys they love best - even if it is home made!

I do! I try and add a wide variety of foraging into my birds daily lives.

One of Higgins favorite toys is his PVC forager. It looks something like this:


I picked one up for each of the birds at a local mart. I stuff it with nuts, nutriberries, and other goodies and they love working at getting the stuff out. For added levels of difficulty, I will put partially cracked nuts in the forager, and let the bird work to finish cracking the nut (the caiques beaks aren't strong enough to crack their favorite types of nuts) and then extracting the nut from the forager.


This spinning maze is a great toy too- stuff it full of treats, attach on the side of the birds cage and watch them play. It took awhile for my fids to get the hang of it though.



I will also use stainless kabobs and make foraging toys out of them- the caiques love chewing on natural loofah. I cut a sizeable chunk of loofah, put a piece of cardboard on the kabob, then loofah, then another piece of cardboard. Maybe some coffee filters to entice chewing. Stuff the holes of the loofah with tasty treats. The birds have to lift up the cardboard that covers both sides of the loofah to discover the treats- or chew through the loofah itself! Also great for hanging veggies and making a fun served meal.



Crazy Leather Box- a great foraging toy for birds who love leather. They must work to get the individual leather straps from the box- or untie the knots to hit the ultimate jackpot! Higgins delights in getting the leather straps out one bye on, and chewing them to death. A great toy because you can also put your own treats in the box.

Kathie, almost all of the toys in my birds' cages are foraging toys. I make a lot of mine but I also buy a lot of them too. I am slowly converting all of their food from their bowls to their toys.

I've been working with them on their foraging toys for about a year now. Rico's quick. Murray's getting there. Molly's extremely picky about it. Rocky's still learning. I find them to be much more content and happy since I've converted most of everything they do in their cages to foraging. They are eager to go into their cages and they are content in being there. I can't explain enough how important I believe foraging is for our birds. Especially our plucking birds!

I don't mean to drag this on, but you've touched on a topic that I focus on at the clinic. If one decides to provide foraging to your bird, it's a learning process for your bird. It takes time and dedication but is very rewarding in watching how interesting it is for your bird. Per Scott Echols DVD, Captive Foraging, if you provide your bird foraging toys and food in their dish, they will eventually choose foraging for their food and abandon the food in their dish. Now if that doesn't say something!

Providing your bird foraging toys will take a little more time than putting their food in a bowl, but I can't state enough how fantastic the rewards are. You can start out so basic and eventually provide something so intrinsic and challenging.

Great thread, Kathie. Thanks.

I also have beads with sizeable holes on them, much like this:


that I will take and stuff with treats. The birds can pick up the bead, hold it in their foot and must work with their beak to get the treat from the hole. Works great with wood beads too for the smaller guys.



Foraging cages can come in two sizes- large, medium and small. I have a medium size one that i swap out between the caiques and stuff with newspaper, odds and ends of toys, then hide almonds and millet. They go crazy trying to reach their favorite toys, chewing up newspaper- but when they see there is millet to be found- watch out!



I have yet to meet a bird that does not love a munchball. I get packs of these for 98 cents at walmart. Untreated, different sizes. Makes for great foot toys for the caiques and amazon, great chew toys for my parrotlet. I stuff with coco fiber, or better yet, nutriberries, dehydrated papaya, kiwi, mango, or other fun favorite treats. Then serve to birds. They go nuts shaking the ball trying to make the treat fall out- then realizing it has to be chewed for the treat to be extracted!

I found some seriously enormous, untreated vine balls at the craft store the other day.. twice the size of Higgins lol. Can't wait to give those a try!

Fabulous thread! Makes me realize just how much I need to get into the concept of foraging.

Lara, I'm finding all this very interesting. I'm going to do some Googling for foraging (now that has a ring to it!), but do you have any links or sources for those of us interested in learning more about foraging as a way to enhance the quality of life for our birds?

Lara - would you mind elaborating on your studies? We can start with something as basic as nuts. I know a lot of people provide unshelled nuts to their birds, which is fine, but I truly believe they get a lot of enjoyment out of opening their own. Believe it or not, we have macaw and cockatoo owners who come to the store mentioning they crack their shelled nuts before serving!

Anything you can offer will be appreciated. I have an entire area dedicated to foraging at the store and I want to get the education out there, but I am not as educated as I would like to be. Spotlight's on you, Lara!

Emily - thanks for all the pictures! This is great! I love the idea about the cones (posted in another thread) - can you cross-post that in here... tell us what you stuff them with? I also love the idea about stuffing the reed balls. Thanks!!!

Nate, off the top of my head, the only thing I can think of that I can recommend is Dr. Scott Echols' "Captive Foraging" DVD. It's kind of basic, but not really. It will get you thinking and I think for everyone interested, it is a must see. It's been over a year since I've watched it and would like to watch it again.

I believe there was a book on the Avian Publications site that I really really wanted but never bought. I believe it's on foraging. I wrote it down and it's at my desk, but finding my desk is a foraging task all in itself. A lot of the foraging information I have, well most of it, is all from my own experiences. I carry this information further in responding to Kathie.

Kathie, I would be more than happy to share everything I've learned, I've observed and I've made with everyone here. I'll post picts if you want, if you ask, but am very lazy about posting pictures because it requires me to download photos. Upload them to photobucket and then post the link. I admit, I'm lazy about the process.

Ok, some statistics to think about when considering foraging.....let me back up a bit. When you think of what a wild bird does during an average day, 40%-60% is foraging for food. The rest of the day is spent socializing, preening, mating, resting, defending themselves from prey, etc. The 40-60% was information gathered from Dr. Echols DVD and many other books over the past few years. You take these beautiful and intelligent creatures and put them in a cage and serve them food in a bowl. You've replaced almost or more than half of what they do in a day and have shrunk it down to something they now accomplish in 10 minutes. What are they supposed to do with the rest of that percentage of the day that has been taken away from them? This is coming from me.....in my opinion the chances are high they are probably going to spend more time preening, aka overpreening which can lead to feather damaging behaviors. I believe lack of socialization will turn to screaming. Sexual frustration from lack of mating which they would have access to in the wild. So what do all of these have to do with foraging? Since foraging takes up the biggest percentage of their day, I believe more of an emphasis needs to be made on it.

Where an individual starts with their bird and foraging will depend on each individual bird. For example, I have four different birds here and each are on a different level of foraging. Rocky, my M2 is on an extremely basic level. Molly, my ekkie is intermediate. Murray, my GW is between basic and intermediate. And last but not least Rico, my U2 is on a very advanced level of foraging. The more advanced, the more challenging it is on the parrot owner.

Like I've said, if you've never provided foraging opportunities for your bird, more than likely you will have to teach it how to forage. To me, this is the fun part. One extremely basic way I give an example of on how to start is not to cover the bowl with a piece of paper and stabilize it with a rubber band as most have heard, but.....an even more basic step. Take a piece of paper and line the inside of the bowl with it. Put the food in the bowl on top of the paper. The next night, fold a corner of the paper in so the bird can see the food but has to push the corner of the paper back in order to get to the food. Next time, fold two corners in and so on. Once the bird gets to the point where he knows to push back all corners of the paper, then move on to wrapping an individual piece of food (I use nutriberries) with paper completely. Then the next time wrap 2 nutriberries, then all of them. Bingo, your most basic foraging has been taught. Next step, move on to a nutriberrie or favorite treat in a clear container that's easy to bite through or open, such as the small clear, plastic cups. Next time put the lid on and throw them on the bottom of the cage or on the outside top of the cage. I can go on, but you get the idea and I will give more examples and ideas if anyone wants them. It's fun to teach to forage.

Three things I think are extremely important in companion parrot ownership:

1) foraging
2) exercise
3) privacy

and in that order.

I should stop there but can't help myself. I can't remember where I heard this or read this but I belive it and can understand it....A bird doesn't eat where it sleeps. My best guess as to why this is true would be so they don't attract prey, and I've probably read that somewhere too. You figure, some bird's prey walks the ground and stumbles on to food. It looks up to see where the food was coming from, "oh lookie there, there's bigger food perched up there on the branch. And how convenient, it happens to be sleeping!".

In this DVD, you will see him using a foraging tree. It's an elementary tree and places a pretty plucked U2 on the tree to eat. This tree is used for eating only and the bird has to work and manipulate different items on the tree in order to get to the food. After a period of time, and you will see, the bird begins to understand the foraging techniques and why the tree exists. I believe the bird even begins to become in better feather, which was one of his points of foraging and the tree.

I have built a foraging tree for Rico. It's my first tree and is anything but basic. It's for Rico, my most challenging bird. It's not only challenging for him to get around on, as in he has to think of how to get from point A to point B, but the toys I hang on it are foraging toys. So once he figures out how to get to point A, then he needs to figure out how to get the food out of the object. He loves this tree. He has been on it for the past three hours already. It provides him 1) foraging, 2) exercise 3) fun 4) mental stimulation. Unfortunately, no privacy. I will be making them for all of my birds and at different learning intervals. This tree is nothing anyone here shouldn't be able to make. If anyone is interested, I would be more than happy to take a video of it and post it. Lots of little nooks and crannies and twists and turns.

Dr. Echols and Dr. O are both speaking at this year's AAV conference in Providence. Dr. Echols will be speaking on a few differnent things including foraging. I just found out yesterday that I will be going with Dr. O and am very excited. I'll be excited to share what I hear and learn here too.

Thanks for asking for my insight, Kathie. I love talking about foraging and appreciate you asking for me to share my studies. Hope I didn't cross the line for sharing my thoughts. Moderators, please feel free to remove them if you don't find them appropriate.

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Lara & The Flock