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Today's work! The dry mix foraging bundles for the week. Brown thick paper for the big birds, brown tissue paper for the tiels, and white paper for the quakers. They are all filled withe appropriate amount and mix of my dry stuff- grain mix, big birds dry mix, seeds, nuts, etc. Just put one somewhere in the cage, and it is not only an "instant" meal but great foraging.
As you can see, I start with a
rectangular piece of paper, (although this one was a bit too fat and
not quite long enough to be optimum).....
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then fold in the two long sides, before
twisting the ends tightly around......
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and wrapping them to one side and loosely
knotting.
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Done!
Foraging with fresh food is a bit
harder, but it does not need to be. For example, why not get several
of these mugs from My Safe Bird Store.
(Go HERE for the mugs)
or for large parrots/those not safe
with plastic, these mini stainless steel pails from The Bird Safe Store.
(Go HERE for pails)
Distribute your fresh food, be it mash
or whatever, among the mungs, and hang them, just alone by
themselves with a hook on the handle, around the cage. Easy! Fill 3, 4, 5, however many, and
just hang wherever, from the middle of the top bars, on the side
bars, from a toy, top to bottom, all over. Start slow, and keep
moving them to harder places to reach. Trust me, your parrots will
figure it out, they do not need everything handed to them! It may
take encouragement in the beginning, but it will be wonderful when
they get the hang of it, just like we feel better after we take
control of our own life and start doing things more for ourselves,
moving around, exploring. And climbing all over for each little bit,
hanging upside down, going to the cage bottom, that is all foraging,
not to mention a bit of exercise. Plus, it is really not any harder
than dishing the food all in to one or two dishes.
4 comments:
this is so funny! I make those little paper towel knots for my parrots, too. I made two baskets for them today, one for each. Some paper towels were empty, some had treats inside
You have lucky parrots, you take such great care of them; I love reading your blog! For some of mine, like my ekkies, a paper bundle full of... more paper(!) is actually terribly exciting. I mix plain paper with their food, so they can participate in their favorite hobby- making "spit balls" by dunking little bits of chewed up paper in their water dish. Fun, right?
Spit balls, funny :) Lino likes to take his paper knots and than dunk them in his water bowl. I thought at first, he just softens the paper or something, but after a while I figured out what he does is, he dunks all the empty paper knots. I'm still trying to figure out if I think it's genius or just plain strange!
I can't answer if it is genius or strange, but I think he should get together with the Ekkies to discuss all the subtleties and techniques involved in paper dunking!
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