Enrichment Diversity

Offering hanging enrichment is an amazing start when increasing your birds mental stimulation. Mental stimulation is vital to a good quality of life within captive care for our parrots. It decreases a wide range of behavioral problems and is simple for us to do!

But parrots also need diversity within their enrichment in order to stay engaged and continue with the benefits. It’s like I give a child a teddy bear to play with. They love it, play with it a lot. But when they ask for a new toy if I give them the same bear, it won’t feel as fun... eventually the bears loose the newness and excitement and the child plays less and less with it. Same thing with offering the same enrichment all the time.

One extremely easy way to switch that up that also still allows for the bird to forage is stainless steel or plastic pickets with foot toys!! Foot toys can be assembled pieces or they can just be “toy parts” like I’m showing here with a grooves piece of wood or mahogany pods for Munchkin. Yes even munchkin can and will destroy toys and toy parts with his beak. He goes through toys like my normal beak birds, I just use softer materials and thinner pieces of wood.

Don’t over think enrichment. Just start trying some things! Your birds will thank you. And you’ll thank me for busy beaks and positive changes in behavior.

You can view our hand-made parrot enrichment here.