As we know African Greys are very prone to behavioral problems, such as plucking for example. This ailment can be caused by numerous health issues, but often it goes in conjunction with boredom. A bored parrot is a miserable parrot. A miserable parrot will scream, bite, or pluck his own feathers. A miserable parrot is not a healthy parrot. Physical health is directly connected to the mental health, and if mentally the bird is unhappy it is much more susceptible to disease.
In the wild, parrots spend hours foraging for food, they fly long distances to find a food or water source. The rest of the time they spend preening, sleeping and interacting with the flock. In captivity, we provide all the food in dishes and it takes a parrot maximum an hour a day to feed, so what is he supposed to do during the rest of the day? In some studied, plucking amazon parrots were divided into two groups. One group was given plenty of foraging opportunities and had to look for the food, another group was given food in bowls, as normally it is done. The group which had to forage for food grew feathers faster and resolved to plucking significantly less than the group who was served food in bowls.
So, what I am leading to - it is very important to enrich the environment of our birds. Toys is one way of enrichment, but not all toys are created equal and the bird should an access to a variety of toys - paper, cardboard, wooden, plastic/acrylic, foraging, etc.
If your bird doesn't play with the toys, then you need to search for other types of toys which will attract its attention.
Instead of having only two bowls for food, get three or four smaller ones and distribute all sorts of different foods between them, cover the top with some paper, and let the bird explore what is hidden in each dish.
Just recently, I gave Digby a birdie bagel - those cardboard things - well he just dropped it on the floor and was done with it. Then I saw that Squidy puts the bagels between the cage bars, so I did that, he did show a little more interest, but not as much as I wanted. Again, thanks to Squidy and her creativeness, I saw that these bagels can be put together in a chain sort of way. So I made a chain of smaller bagels, and as I know Digby likes pulling and shredding on strips of paper and raffia, I tied some of those to the bagels - and success - he was busy pulling on the raffia and paper and destroying the bagels all morning and as a result - no plucked out feathers were found
here is the result of Digby's morning work
If you haven't seen these already, these are two of the best free booklets written about enrichment and toy making you can find on the internet. You can download them from this page (at the bottom)
http://www.parrotenrichment.com/home.html Bare in mind, that not all ideas described in the booklet will be suitable for your parrot, you have to know the habits of your bird, whether he chews things up and spits the bits out, or tend to swallow softer materials like paper. Some toys are best given only under the supervision, for example when the bird is out and playing on the playground, that includes toys which have many loose ropes and strings. Learn your parrot's habit and try to enrich his environment as much as possible. In the end of the day, it is very easy to do and once you get the grip of it it will only take a few minutes.
Inspired by the booklet, a couple of days ago, I took a clean carton from Beak Appetit food, made two holes on one side and tied it to the cage of the bars with a leather string, filled the bucket with wooden pieces, some bits leftover from the toys Digby shredded previously and I just saved the bits, some shredders palm ribbon pieces, nutri-berries, a few nuts, etc. Digby enjoyed chucking all the stuff out of the carton and then nibbling on the carton itself!
My cockatiel and budgie don't really like toys much, but they do like chewing all sorts of branches. So I took an untreated willow basket (which cost me only 99p), filled it with similar pieces as Digby's "bucket", threw in some pellets and a bit of seed in there, then tied a few wooden beads to the rim of the basket, and put a small wooden twig through it too. Well, it has been a success so far - they played in it all day long yesterday and all morning today - eating the food, picking the bits out, and nibbling on the basket itself.
Here is her diving in it
Be creative, devote some time to creating all sorts of interesting toys and foraging opportunities for your bird. They live almost as long as us, humans, and we are never satisfied with the same setting or toys for long, are we? So don't assume that that one wooden toy you bought will serve your bird for years and keep it happy. It won't. They are too intelligent to be satisfied with just one type of toy.
