Table of Contents
- Understanding your African grey's enrichment needs
- What kind of toys do African grey's like? (chewing, foraging, interactive)
- Top Toy Textures to Keep Your African Grey Entertained for Hours!
- Beyond Toys: Enrichment Ideas for African Grey's
Understanding your African grey's enrichment needs
Keeping such a smart parrot entertained can be challenging. Like all parrots, grey’s love to chew on paper, medium-density woods, cardboard, and plant-based materials. But, to keep an African grey properly entertained, you’ll want to go over and above just providing it with bird toys.
You'll also want to provide your grey with foraging opportunities, time outside of the cage, exercise, and multi-sensory stimulation. I'll cover each of these ways to stimulate your pet below.
Think of your African grey as a feathered 4 year old child. It's constantly on the go and curious. A physically and emotionally healthy African Grey Parrot is going to want front stage and center in all of your activities.
How do you keep an African GREY entertained?
Keeping such a smart parrot entertained can be challenging. Like all parrots, grey’s love to chew on paper, medium-density woods, cardboard, and plant-based materials. But, to keep an African grey properly entertained, you’ll want to go over and above just providing it with bird toys.
You'll also want to provide your grey with foraging opportunities, time outside of the cage, exercise, and multi-sensory stimulation. I'll cover each of these ways to stimulate your pet below.
Think of your African grey as a feathered 4 year old child. It's constantly on the go and curious. A physically and emotionally healthy African Grey Parrot is going to want front stage and center in all of your activities.
What kind of toys do African Grey parrots like?
According to the research by Irene Pepperberg, PhD, African grey parrots have the intelligence of a 4 to 5 year old child and they love problem solving and working puzzles.
In addition to hanging wood bird toys, it will also be important to provide your pet with interactive toys where it has to solve puzzles in order to get a prize. Caitec / Paradise make a variety of foraging bird toys in medium sizes that grey’s love to play with.
Another brand of bird puzzle toys is called Busy Bird. They hysterically call their toys,” toys that birds love to screw around with,” because your bird has to work at unscrewing long bolts to get at the prize inside.
My African Grey’s love toys that they can make noise with. Smokey, in particular, love's big bells. He's learned to ring a big bell every time I enter the bird room.
How can I make my African Grey parrot happy?
A lot of people ask how can I keep my African Grey Parrot happy? It's not very hard actually.
One of the most important things that you can do to keep your African Grey happy is to practice parrot wellness strategies. This involves giving your bird a very well-balanced diet of pellets and raw, plant-based foods. The more well nourished your pet is the better its disposition will be.
>Other parrot wellness activities involve ensuring that your bird get plenty of sleep every night. Birds need 10 - 12 hours of sleep a night. Without adequate sleep a grey can get grumpy and aggressive, just like you and I do. And, finally your bird will need plenty of exercise.
One way to ensure that your parrot gets plenty of exercise is to get it a tree style bird stand where you can create various foraging stations and make your bird move around and have to work for its food. If you're not familiar with what what foraging is all about, check out my book called “Teach Your Bird To Forage.”
If you stop and think about it, wild African gray parrots have to work to find their food and once they find a food site they have to work to get at the food source. Foraging activities can take up to 70% of a wild birds waking hours.
A bird's brain is just wired to have a need to forage. imagine how learning how to forage for its food could occupy your bird for several hours a day. A foraging bird rarely turns into a perch potato! Nor does it destroy its feathers out of sheer boredom.
Another way to keep your parrot happy is to provide it with multi-sensory stimulation. That's just a fancy term that means providing your parrot with fun auditory noises that it can hear and visual stimulation that it can see. A super easy way to provide multi-sensory stimulation is the play the TV or radio for your bird.
Okay! Just like kids, love to watch cartoons. My bird’s are addicted to watching other birds on TV. They especially love to watch Bird TV For Parrots by Parrot Town on YouTube. I play it just about every day. I'm not kidding! They literally nestle up on a perch to get a bird's-eye view of the Timneh African grey, the Moluccan cockatoo, and other birds who are going about their day squawking and chirping and modeling great behavior for my birds.
Sometimes when I am in my bird room cleaning up and my dogs come in, I holler at them “Get Out!” Now, if I enter the bird room at the wrong time when my birds are mesmerized by Bird TV, Peachy, my Moluccan Cockatoo, will holler at me,” Get Out!” It's as if I disrupted his entertainment. Well, pardon me.
In conclusion, you should be proud of yourself for learning important strategies that will help you reduce bird boredom and keep your African Grey Parrot happy. Providing your bird with a full range of activities to occupy its mind and its time is one of the best things that you can do to support your intelligent and inquisitive feathered friend.
Related Posts:
References:
Link to this blog
Burroughs, D. (2024, July 16). Guide to safe bird toys for your pet bird. BirdSupplies.com. https://birdsupplies.com/blogs/news/your-guide-to-safe-bird-toys-and-weekly-inspections
Diane Burroughs, LCSW is a licensed psychotherapist trained in ABA therapy techniques. She specializes in avian anxiety disorders and is certified in Nutrition For Mental Health. Diane has written a number of bird behavior books and she offers behavior consultations. She's developed a range of UnRuffledRx Science-backed Parrot Wellness Supplies.
Diane's products have been featured in the Journal of Avian Medicine and Surgery and at Exoticscon, a conference for exotic pet veterinarians. Her bird collars & supplements are stocked in avian vet clinics and bird stores throughout the US. With over 30 years in the field of behavior, Diane has created thousands of successful individualized behavior plans that help pets thrive.
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