Creative Foraging Systems, Bird Toys & Feeders, Keeps Birds Busy

Vet said had to give my African Gray parrot, food foraging opportunities. So now she has to work for all of her dry food.Purchased this blue tilt feeder from Amazon. She got over her fear of a new item in her cage quickly, food in it helped. :-) If your bird is really afraid of new items, you may want to place one of their favorite snacks in it first, I used some small crackers. She has gotten very adept at getting the food out of it, but she still has to work at it. I clean the tilt feeder periodically, disassembling it on a towel, being careful to not lose screws or spring. (hint: take before photo so you know how it goes back together) It is easy to reassemble. (note: I do not recommend this feeder for wet food such as veggies or fruit.)Also for foraging I put some food in a dish and it cover with aspen bedding chips, she has to dig thru the bedding to get the food. Occasionally I use cardboard boxes (with no tape on them) or cardboard egg cartons, with a snack inside, she really enjoys tearing the boxes apart.The foraging feeding has seemed to have helped, she was starting to feather pluck, and now she seems to stopped. If you have a species of parrot prone to plucking (most of the medium to large parrots are), you really should get them on forage feeding! Especially if the are left alone for long periods of the day. There is info online about forage feeding ideas.

This toy is great overall if your bird does not know how to unscrew wingnuts. The top is screwed down with a wingnut. My macaw is a pro at unscrewing anything and simply takes the top off and gets the treat. The other drawback is that pieces of food will sometimes get trapped half way between levels. They act as a wedge and prevent the moving parts from moving. Aside from removing the top, you cannot disassemble the chamber part of the toy for cleaning or getting stuck pieces out. My senegal and african grey mastered this toy in about two days and can get treats out as fast as I can put them in. They are pros at foraging toys, and I always need to alter the toys to make the toys more challenging (zip ties, wads of paper, corks for plugs, etc). Unfortunately, since this toy does not disassemble, I cannot do that easily with this toy.

The yellow-collared macaw likes to eat from it. He watched me very carefully as I put it together and played with it and put food in it, and learned quickly to jiggle the bottom piece to get food [It's meant to be rotated, but jiggling works]. I was pleased to note that he does not spill food on the ground, he just releases it and eats it as he needs to. I don't think he knows about turning the top piece yet, but he watched me with interest when I turned it recently.The biggest problem I have with this is, that when I take the top piece off to fill it, the center shaft where the bold goes is exposed, and it is really hard not to get food into it. And if there is food in it, the top piece won't go on as it should. So now I take a bit of masking tape and cover the end of the bolt and the hole while I'm filling it, and take it off to put the top on. This makes it easy.

Your browser does not support HTML5 video.  This is a great foraging toy and even cockatiels can do it. I saw a couple comments that say it might be too much for a cockatiel but mine figured it out in a couple days. I just crush up a nutri-berries treat and put some in all the compartments at the top and it keeps her busy for a while and is rewarded when she completes it.My only complaint would try and make an easier way to get the treat in at the top instead of having the wing nut exposed and having to unscrew it every time. I could see how bigger bird could just unscrew it to remove the top lid.

My bird was not at all interested in this toy, no matter how often I tried to show him how to work it. Very difficult to clean and service if experiencing a jam, and the feed hole was too small to allow for more interesting treats. The screw pin on the top was also a bit of a minus, since my Jenday would focus more on unscrewing that than on snagging the food. Too easy to get at, so was forced to place near the top of the cage.Two stars out of five. Others might have better luck.

The parrot I got this for has managed to unscrew the top and remove the lid. He got frustrated immediately because the treats got stuck between levels. He's only a brown headed parrot (size of a senegal). If he is large enough to disassemble it, but small enough to get frustrated by it, I'd hate to think what the bigger birds would do with it! I'm usually happy with the creative foraging toys, but this one hasn't worked out all that well. We may have to try it in one of the other birds cages and see if they fair better with it.

Its huge. Its bigger then my quaker parrot. Definitely for larger sized parrots.Does seem to be made very well.

My Ekkie loves it! Or is it the sunflower seeds he loves. He is very sedentary and doesn't play with many toys. He learned to spin both top and bottom to empty all the sunflower seeds out...nom nom. He got the bottom in a couple of days and it took him two weeks to figure out to spin the top section as well. He now only gets it loaded every couple of days and only partially filled as sunflower seeds are not good for birds. Now on to harder foraging toys.

青い半透明のプレートをスライドさせて中のおやつを下に落とすのが本来の使用方法なのですが、うちのズアカハネナガインコの場合は本来の使用方法でおやつをとっていたのは最初のうちだけでした。揺らしたほうが早く取れることに気がついてしまうと飼い主の思惑通りの遊び方はしてくれません。むしろ揺らすだけの力のないオキナインコのほうが上手に本来の使用方法でおやつをとっています。小型の鳥用なのかもしれないです。