« Toys & Entertainment Articles

As mentioned throughout the site, Quakers are intelligent and can get bored if they are not entertained. Obviously we can not be at their beckon call for every minute of the day. This is where toys come in and lots of them! There are so many toys available for parrots these days that most Quaker Parrot owners become addicted to buying and making toys for their little feathery friends.

It has been suggested that a Quakers cage should have an area that is so covered in toys so they can hide behind the toys for security. This also means they have a lot of different toys to attack and play with to keep them entertained when you are not home.

Quaker Parrots are not usually as destructive as larger parrots and so often toys can last for a long time. This is a great bonus allowing you to collect toys over time that you can circulate through the cage and play areas.

It is a good idea to have a mix of toys that they can play with, puzzles, paper, wooden, cotton, bells and more…

Other good suggestions are to have toys you can rotate each month so that your parrot doesn’t become bored with the same old toys.

Pluto is spoilt to some extent as we both work from home, allowing us to spend much time with Pluto. However, we do go out for long periods sometimes and Pluto has learnt to adapt to this.

Yet when we know we will be out for an extended part of the day we try to use this time to give Pluto some interesting things to play with, that he doesn’t normally have the opportunity to play with. For example yesterday, we gave him some bits of natural string that he could cart around the cage and some paper towel that he could shred to pieces. “I personally was hoping he would make a nest”

Types of Parrot Toys

There are a lot of fun toys available to buy and make. One of our favourite which unfortunately is not easily available in Australia is what is called the “Jolly Ball”. This is a plastic ball originally made for ferrets to run through. Some clever people came up with the idea to hang it and then hang strings of toys from the ball. Quakers love to climb in and out of the ball and play with the toys.

Other great ideas are paper wheels, where a roll of paper is placed on a wheel and the parrot can pull the paper off and destroy it. Toys like this are great for parrots that a feather-pluckers as it can help to distract their condition when they a ripping up paper.

It is important that you check your Parrot’s toys on a regular basis to ensure they are still safe to play with. A few things you can look for are;
rust on connectors, bells and metal objects.
that your bird can not get their toes caught in loops of string or chains

Make your own toys!

There are so many creative ideas available to start making your own parrot toys! And it’s cheaper! You can get so much enjoyment from watching your little friend play with your hand made toy!

The easiest most effective play toy we made for Pluto once; was scrunching up some newspaper in the centre and then ripping some “spider legs”. We just placed it into the side of the cage and let the legs dangle and Pluto happily played with it for hours.

Amazon even has some creative books available.

Parrot Play Stands

We don’t have a parrot play stand but we did make one a few months ago that never got used. A lot of parrot owners have different stands throughout the house enabling them to take their Quaker parrot into which ever room they happen to be in.

We made a stand out of “Bottle Brush” an Australian native and Pluto did enjoy picking at the bark. We have seen some very creative stands made from plumbing pipe, sticks, old Christmas tree stands and more.

Of course you can also buy stands, some are very creative and can even be looked at as a centre piece.

The idea again is to dangle lots of toys from the stand so that your little mate has something to play with.