lol! true enough! ivy HAS torn food out of my hands, but it's been to get me to pay attention to her and not the food lol.

i love birds

I just use tree branches that I pick up from the woods around my house after a storm and dry them either in my oven (small), wood stove (medium) or in the garage for about two months (large). The birds use them for perching, beak wiping and chewing. They love nothing better than to get the big ones with all the little branches still attached to them and to start at the ends and work their way toward the 'trunk' from which they peel the bark off. I never need to trim their nails, never spend a single cent and never have to worry about foot sores.

I agree 100% on variety (my birds also have both cotton and sisal ropes, grapevine garlands, boodas, manzanita, a few concrete perches, etc) but there is something very unnatural about asking a bird to perch on sand paper. There is no wood in nature that would be so consistenly and so very abrasive that I know of and I always try to make things as natural as possible for them or to reproduce natural conditions with the materials I have at my disposal. After all, most captive parrots come from tropical or semi-tropical climates and the trees that grow there are very thin and/or smooth-barked so nature couldn't have possibly given them the kind of thick skin needed to perch on sand paper. Plus, captive parrots are kept with unnaturally short claws (for the convenience of the owner) so the soles of their feet are in more direct contact with the perch than those in the wild.

I may be a worry-wart but my motto is better safe than sorry when it comes to my animals wellbeing so no sand paper perches for my birds.

Ruby has one. I thought it would be just perfect but she is VERY interested in everything I eat and she hops right off! Silly Macaw! Maybe Ivy will be a good girl and stay put!

that is so cool! i have to buy all my wood perches because all i have are palm trees are. i've always given artemis natural branches, usually dragonwood with all the bark, but i always have to trim his nails.

i had a cement perch for ivy but i switched it out to a sandy. the cement just seems like it would hurt their feet and it's very cold.

I have used these in the past and they do work great if your bird stays on the perch. Some do and some don't. It could work very well for a travel perch.