 My name is Marlene McCohen and I want to welcome you to Parent Tip Tuesday. Today's video is going to be about bird toys because everyone wants to know what their birds like to play with right? So today we are going to break it down for you including all the ways to make your own bird toys as well as different ideas for toys for your birds. Today I have with me Picasso my mustache parakeet I have Jersey my umbrella cockatoo chilling in the background and I have Cody hi Cody do you want to come say hello? Cody's over here on his stand oh he smells so good and Vinny is actually here you probably hear some crunching in the background that's Vinny chewing up his box something which we will get to in a little bit. Let's go over the toys that you can buy from stores. Do you acquire toys for your birds and how do you know which kind of toys your birds like? Some of you write to me that your birds don't like toys at all and I know that can be frustrating but do you know that there's many different types of toys and maybe you just haven't found the type that your bird is most interested in. So I'm going to break it down for you these are my categories of toys for your birds. The first kind of toys that you can get for your birds consist of wood. Lots of birds enjoy chewing on and destroying wood. Wood toys are excellent for larger parrots. However, lots of toys are made out of wood for smaller parrots. So let's look at this toy for example all these beads and all of these little stairs they're actually made out of wood. See Cody's really excited about that. Cody loves wood toys that's something that Cody is very interested in so if you have an African gray your bird may love wood but all birds are different so it's really important to get to know your bird. Rocky loves wood toys but for Rocky he gets toys made out of larger pieces of wood and I'll show you more about that in a little bit. So this is a good example of wood toys but there's many other different types of toys made out of wood. What if your bird is not interested in chewing up wood? Well some birds love beads. You guys know you've seen it in my video Picasso loves beads that's something that he enjoys a lot as well as Jersey so your bird may be interested in toys that are a little more glittery have a little bit more shine something like a young four-year-old might enjoy playing with or making her bracelets out of. Sometimes birds really love beads and maybe you want to try bead based toys for your parrots. This toy for example has small little beads Picasso really likes beads like this but I don't think he would notice these right away Picasso is more interested in actual beads. Beaded toys quite often have beads like these you'll notice I know you've seen that my birds like to play with them they're very hard plastic very hard to break a lot of you ask me if my birds will swallow them this is an important subject to go over. First of all these beads are quite large it'd probably be impossible for them to swallow to begin with if you look at Picasso you can probably see let's see if I can get you to see you see that's not something that Picasso can swallow but it's really important to know that these are the beads that are on parrot toys when you buy them so my birds just chew them off and then I also give them beads like it and make new toys made out of the beads a lot of birds love beads they love the colors they love to see if they can break them they love the hard plastic now for those of you worried about swallowing beads these are too large for my birds to swallow if you think your bird has a problem where he is trying to swallow the beads you should be careful but in general birds chew things all the time they chew plastic they chew wood they could really swallow anything by accident so if you feel like that is something your bird is doing you should be careful of that but Picasso if you look at him he's very into beads and we will get more into this exciting tray in a little bit but right now I am losing Picasso to the beads oh Picasso also likes wood and he loves yellow so right now he is playing with a yellow wooden bead which is very popular for Picasso Cody actually likes purple you want to see the purple one yeah Cody likes purple and blue so right now we're going over the toys that you can buy from stores so we went over wood we went over beads the next thing that you can get on toys for birds are bells Jersey loves bells she loves to play with the bells and the inside of the bells it's really exciting to her Jersey is such a girl she loves the beads and the bells and Picasso loves the beads so get to know your bird all these silver bells and pieces on toys that are silver both Picasso and Jersey love interestingly enough they fight over the same toys Picasso likes bells that are a little bit smaller but Jersey loves the inside of the bell she likes to play with it and Vinny also likes to ring bells but he likes to ring the solid hard bells that also Rocky enjoys playing with and for those of you who are curious about anything that you see in this video today I'm gonna have it in my link below under products that I love so check it out you can go online and order anything from there that you find interesting and I will put descriptions in there too of things that I buy and why I buy them so that will help you a lot if you think your bird is into silver which a lot of birds are then you can get some bell based toys they'll of course break the bells off but I mean that's what they're there for right the next thing that you may find on a bird toy or your parrot may be interested in is paper paper is amazing it's great for foraging toys it's great for foraging in general you can put paper around birds food hide birds food I think we did that in last week's video on taking your bird outside that just happened and that was pretty cool you'll see paper in a lot of different things like this is what you call a foraging perch your bird stands on it but he can get busy with all of this paper which Cody seems to be very interested in I find paper to be the easiest thing to get your birds to like birds love chewing up little paper pieces anytime I've wanted to keep my bird busy in a pinch just a piece of paper or like even a paper plate would do it doesn't matter as long as they're chewing up this is where boxes paper mail that comes to the door that you're not interested in you probably don't need a shredder if you have any bird like Picasso or Vinny Cody's really enjoying this actually so I'll probably give this to him and put this in his cage he likes it that's so cute I just got this out of the toy box now so I'm excited to know that he likes it you may have a bird that is interested more in jewels if you have one of those birds that like is always at your rings or earrings and things like that that's the kind of bird that would definitely enjoy toys with a lot of bling and silver in them do you want to play with this silver thing he's kind of interested in that that's just a ring by the way just like a simple ring for the toys which could be just as entertaining for your birds surprisingly the next thing that your parrots may love are reflective toys mirrors some birds really enjoy mirrors Vinny enjoys mirrors Cody obviously enjoys everything that I am playing with I don't know him to like mirrors but he's liking this right now right Cody Vinny loves mirrors he loves to look in mirrors he has in his cage mirror that is like a four-way mirror that hangs that he can just push and play with Vinny loves that so your bird may enjoy reflective toys that's another type of toy that you could include in your group of toys that you let your bird play with what do you think of that Cody are you handsome yeah you're kind of handsome right hey this is really good guys because Picasso's right here and they're not freaking out because usually Picasso would bully but I think Picasso's interested in all the toys here so it's good for bonding for the toys to be in the same area here's another thing that your bird may enjoy and you can actually find this on a lot of bird toys that you might buy and that is fabrics now I should say you have to be careful with fabrics due to cloth and paction so you want to make sure that your bird isn't trying to swallow any type of fabric always be careful with that but some toys have really cool leather pieces and other fabrics that are interesting if you find your bird interested in chewing up towels and things like that and you're sure that your bird is not swallowing them then you can do a lot of things with different types of safe fabrics it's always important though to make sure that the fabrics are 100 content that's the best thing you can do to make sure that your parrots are safe so what we have just covered are parrot toys that you would find in a bird store or online the obvious things that you may buy for your parrot what I want you to get out of that group is that there are many different types of toys that parrots love to play with but there are other cool ideas for parrot toys and we're going to go over them right now the next coolest thing that you can get for your birds and I love this this is something I thought I came up with but I wasn't the only one with this idea I've been doing this for my birds for so long because in my head this was the safest thing that you could do for your parrot and here it is baby toys baby toys are amazing for your birds look how cute this is one they're colorful birds love color two they're pretty much safe because nobody wants to give their baby something dangerous and three some of them can be very interactive so toys like this we love to play with jersey jersey we love to have her take these off and put them back on and we make a big deal when she does anything with it you can teach your birds colors they're soft plastic always soft plastic is really important because it's easy for birds to choose so they really enjoy that what do you think Cody do you want to pull the top one off the orange good bird and the great thing about baby toys is you can go to a store like tj max or Ross or marshals and get them for a really good price here's another baby toy I love for the birds these rings you can do so much with you can piece them together in so many different ways you can hang them like a toy you can hang other toys on them they're safe they're a harder plastic so it takes them a lot longer to destroy and it definitely does keep them busy Cody really loves his baby toys on the subject of baby toys I love these for my birds let me show you this is a bucket of pantry items inside you find things that you would find at the grocery store when shopping for you know groceries except it's all plastic it's for little kids to imagine themselves cooking dinner or whatever little kids do but I buy this stuff for my birds so you'll see they'll have like strawberries they'll have a whole chicken you know I can use this to show my birds what could happen if they don't behave right Cody just kidding baby just kidding so they play with these things they have lots of different shapes they have like fake potato chips they also have fake french fries for some reason the french fries are always a big hit it's easy for them to hold there's lots of different shapes lots of different sizes and most importantly they're really lightweight I'll tell you why that is very important to your birds so baskets like these are excellent they often come in their own container so you basically have your own bird box and it's easy for them to chew it's safe it's another baby toy that is excellent for your birds with that being said I have seen birds on our parent station that's our Facebook group playing with xylophones and pianos and all sorts of things so you can really engage with your parents and get some great videos and entertainment with baby toys so baby toys are always a really good option for your bird next is the do-it-yourself toys so you guys saw this box let me show you this box again and I'll show you a close-up of it too this is in my drawer the case originally held something like the pantry toys it probably was an old version of the pantry toys and I turned it into holding my beads and wood blocks for the birds this is where I go to to make my own toys for the birds so let me show you some things that I have ready all the time for me to make bird toys with first of all I have these sticks you probably saw me with these sticks before it's just sticks like these they like to choose colors and hold them they're wooden sticks I can do lots of different things with them this is a toy from amazon it's got some leather so it's got a little bit of the fabric the wood the beads and these things are kind of like smaller versions this is something I could make myself with my own sticks also I got from Target and I'm pretty sure you can order these on amazon I'll probably add this to my link below these are little wooden balls with holes in them which is awesome for putting together your own toy I have these kind of wooden ones and look guys this is a toy also from amazon that I buy a lot very similar it's made out of the same exact thing so essentially I could make my own ladder or whatever I want with these toys of course in my collection I have the good old plastic beads that I love adding to their toys do you guys like that I found out that my birds love this color so I got them this color of all the beads which is so interesting because there is a bird that collects all of this color in the wild so I thought it was kind of funny that they do like this color so sometimes I just go buy them the colors that I know that they like instead of them fighting for it I also have little bells so I have jingle bells that I can attach to their toys if I want to with the bells and the wood pieces and the beads and all of that I can make my own toy here's another great thing you can buy to make bird toys this is a big bag of wood so if I was to make a toy for Rocky I would use this large bag of wood and some rope and make toys for Rocky out of something like this these are so great to have on hand I love making bird toys I got a few different shapes see these ones are bigger sticks for Rocky and it's really fun you could actually have an arts and crafts night and have people make bird toys for you if you feel like it becomes work because we all know that they destroy them so quickly now this guys brings us to our fourth option for bird toys revamping old bird toys so this is kind of going along with the do-it-yourself bird toys but we're going to use old materials so let me give you a great example this is a brand new bird toy they've already got at it because you know while we're making this video and while I was setting up they're pretty excited it's a ladder I love this ladder I buy it all the time the reason we buy this ladder so often is because one they love it two it makes the bird section look really cool especially when we've attached the tree in the middle and put this it just looks like a birdie wonderland so we use this a lot but I want to show you something really important as beautiful as this is they are going to chew it and they're going to destroy it and there is a chance that it is going to end up looking like this this is dangerous you can't leave this hanging in your bird room or on your perch you always have to be aware you always have to keep an eye out for how damaged something is take it you don't have to do anything with it right away you can revamp it later so let's talk about how to revamp bird toys so I would take something like this put it aside for when I'm ready to deal with it because at that moment I may not want to take it and revamp it but I definitely want the pieces of this to maybe make it again for example out of that I could get something like this this wire this is a great wire for bird toys and on that note all of the little hooks that you ever find and get with your bird toys like these types of hooks these types of hooks and especially all of these little d-rings I think they're called d-rings I don't actually know what they're called you always want to keep these save them and put them together for future toy revamping George's nieces came over and they knew where the toy box was this is a very bad example I'm very old because the birds loved it and they got at it and they asked if they could make a bird toy so if you know any kids in your life that are really artistic you can help them by giving them the pieces and beads to make bird toys this is already been taken away because I need a little more revamping now and you never want to have like wires hanging for too long you want to make sure that it's always in the safest way but you can do little arts and crafts and have kids make something and then you could fix it and put it together yourself so that is something that you absolutely can do guess what guys I have tools so these are my tools I don't know where I got them one day George said oh by the way those are your tools and I'm like okay and then I learned from doing my bird toys that these are really cool arts and crafts toys you can have things in your box like these wires and you can break them with this and cut them and bend them always save things like these this was holding a bird toy you need things like these these are nice strong pieces of metal that won't bend and they're not able to be damaged and with that with these tools you can open it right I don't know open it and you can put some new beads and things in and you can make a very nice and safe bird toy and after you do something like this whatever you want like real quick things you can attach this to something else you can put on bell at the end you can do whatever you want I'm just doing something really quick for you guys right now just to get an idea of how important it is to save all these pieces then I have my tool no idea what it's called and I broke it but okay hold on I have my tool and I can bend it there we go so now I bend it safely and then I can put a little ring on it whichever ring fits most of the time you'll have lots of different things these are great things to keep I could put one on each side and make a swing like look there's so many different things that I can do with this I'm putting this ring on this let's see how this works out right Cody this ring will enable me to put something like this okay that's a little exaggerated because this is really big I know I had a smaller one I just showed you guys but something like this really quick toy this is really small I just wanted to show you how you can revamp their old toys using your new things that you always have on hand beads wood blocks wood balls paper you name it you can do so much you can take little balls like these I have a pack of these balls that I use for Rocky and look at what you can make really you can make so many toys yourselves these little rings they're just little plastic rings that you might get when you put a quarter into a machine reminds me a little bit of this pacifier this is Cody's pacifier if you watched my baby shower video for Tracy's baby shower we hung those on the trees Cody loves that he gets so busy with this pacifier I could hang that on a toy there's so many options let's get into the makeshift toy now let's talk about the spur of the moment toy you're busy you're hanging out you're with your bird but he needs to be occupied because otherwise he's going to I don't know eat the keys on your computer board that is when I have little tiny toy boxes on hand and I keep random things in there like for example pen caps of course they're clean no ink was spilled in these pen caps that's very important Cody is like totally left because of this toy box things like pen caps can be really interesting to your bird and can keep them busy for a moment or two at least enough time for you to get something done same with caps from water bottles it's just hard plastic some of it is actually soft plastic it's really made out of the same thing that lots of birds toys are made out of caps from bottles can always be a really great thing to save for your birds if you have larger birds you could keep the caps from shampoo bottles and such things but you always want to wash them thoroughly if you feel better you could put them all in the dishwasher and give them like a real good high pressure rinse as long as they don't melt in there then you're good these are things that I love to have on hand old shoelaces things like these you keep things like these these are also amazing things that I can just put beads through or again these types of things Jersey loves this type of stuff and you see he's enjoying all of these toys there's so many different types of things how about a straw let's see if he's gonna enjoy the straw are you gonna enjoy these straws any of these stand out to you green wow just simple it's a straw it's something that I have on hand and guys when all else fails you can literally give your bird a paper plate to chew if I gave this to Vinny right now where's Picasso oh Picasso's up there being a good bird little things like paper plates you can poke holes in them and hang them and put beads on them you really have so many options for toys for your birds in your own house my favorite thing to do though is to keep a little box everywhere that I hang out of different things for my birds tiny little boxes I'll have like a few pen caps a few water caps some other beads and toys and then I will just use that to keep my bird busy so if I'm on my computer and Cody's on his play stand next to me he's not just standing there bored otherwise he's gonna want to destroy so many different things in the room so it's always good to keep your birds occupied and have available things for your parrot so start thinking differently in terms of what can I keep and what can I save it's a great way to recycle could save a lot of things for your birds that your birds will enjoy in fact if you notice your bird destroying certain types of things then see what you have in the house similar to that and save those things for your birds another thing that I like to do with my birds you might have seen Rocky's laundry video Rocky loves baskets if your bird is hormonal this may not be a good idea but some birds love to hang out in baskets and boxes I should mention boxes as a category of their own because Vinny can be busy with a box all day long he just loves his boxes he loves the FedEx man he loves the UPS man because to him they're bringing him a new prize package so that's very exciting to Vinny there he took the plate you can't see him with something like this a basket some birds like fabrics you can throw different items here's something else that can be very interesting for your parrots that you can save around the house so you can put some fabrics in there for uh oh he flew to the drawer that holds the toys so as you can see this basket's all chewed up because there's some birds that love hanging out in baskets namely Cody and also Rocky for Cody I put actual toys in the basket and let him play in there all just sorts of different toys for Rocky I put fabrics in there he actually doesn't chew up the fabric at all he doesn't swallow or chew it so I don't need to worry about that he just gets really excited about the fabrics and he likes to throw them around and throw them out of the basket and pull them in the basket so that's something that Rocky likes to do and it's a real good idea for keeping them busy when you want them to be next to you but you need them to be a little more occupied with themselves so I really like giving them baskets just make sure you are not simulating their hormonal behaviors so if it's certain times of seasons then be careful with that if they're at a certain age be careful with that and also if they're getting aggressive towards you because of the basket or the box or anything that you give them that's when you know and you've got to watch out but if your bird is enjoying it and hanging out Cody just stuck his head Cody why can't you do these things for the camera look Cody's sticking his head down there now before I go I want to talk about a few hazards that I think are very important pertaining to this video oh my god I wish you guys look you're totally like upside down right now try to immerse yourself in all the toys purple yeah you got the purple oh that's Cody look at this this is like a wonderland for him right now you like that purple again you love purple huh yeah so you're heading there you're so funny leave you guys let's talk about some potential hazards that could be dangerous to your birds when making toys very important to talk about you may or may not have considered these one do not put loose items in your bird's cage that are heavy especially if you have more than one bird so for example things like these like hollow they're really easy and great for your birds but if you have more than one bird it's not a good idea to leave a large wooden block sometimes I give Rocky these blocks that have like ABC you might have seen them like square blocks for Rocky to chew on if there were multiple birds near Rocky I wouldn't give him those because there's always the risk of the birds dropping things on one another I've heard of birds getting concussions or dying because some bird dropped another thing on their head so be very careful with all of the loose toys that you may have in the birds area two we went over this but it's really important of course to remove all of the wires left behind you don't want to leave anything that looks like this for your birds to get strangled in or hurt themselves I know that it looks like there's still what to do but they can always hurt themselves and strangle themselves three you want to be very careful about any strings that you have hanging for your bird make sure they're all serving a purpose so don't hang anything like this in a very lazy way because they can fall they can catch their leg on it they can be hanging upside down they can choke themselves so that is also very important for cloth and faction we want to be very careful of anything that has buzz cloth if you see your bird is chewing up those cozy corners those fluffy things that birds like to sleep in be very aware of that we don't want any birds to have a build up of cloth in their intestines so make sure whatever you let your birds play with it's always made out of 100 cotton and if you notice that your bird is prone to chewing these things a little too much rather than just hanging in them be very aware of that and the last and very important thing I want you guys to remember is if you see your bird enjoys playing with certain things around the house you might think hey let me create more of that but you still want to be careful of things like wires and stuff that they chew like on keyboards it might feel to you like well I have a spare keyboard here to chew it why don't I just give it to him or why don't I give him a bunch of old wires you have to be really careful of lead poisoning and metal toxicity we have gone over that in another video if you want to learn more about that just a hazard that I want you guys to be aware of I hope you enjoyed this video I really enjoyed going over all of these things and having all of these toys out one last thing I would tell you it's always great to have a toy box I have a large box here filled with all sorts of toys some I haven't put out yet some I have I like to do a rotation with the birds so sometimes I'll pull things out that aren't completely destroyed and put them in a different birds cage or surprise them a little bit I want to keep them 100 entertained all the time so thank you guys so much for watching please subscribe like and comment on this video it helps motivate me to make more videos please let me know what your favorite part of this video was in the comments because I love those types of comments if you're interested in anything you've seen here today check out my link below called products I love I'll have a lot of information on there on things for birds I think you guys will enjoy it and please come join parrot station it is my facebook group for parrot lovers where I can see all of your birds because I want to get to know your birds as well follow me on social media come say hi if you want to see what these naughty guys are up to all day long follow me on instagram at marlene mcconan and you will see a lot more of these naughty little babies I love you guys so much thank you for watching bye