[JumpinKaren]

Chloe (age 6 months) has been with us for almost a week now and has adjusted to her new home very quickly. However, she has not demonstrated much interest in her toys so far. I've tried to encourage her to play with her toys, but this doesn't seem to help.

Right now, she has a tear-apart type toy with bells, beads and string, and a toy that is packed with strings of paper and some treats, and some knit pom-poms that I made for her which she can tear apart. In addition to this, she has a variety of perches, and a fleece hut that she uses.

Does anyone have recommendations for good toys or ways that I can get Chloe to play with the toys that she has?

Thanks,

-Karen

[Hana]

Well from what I understand each quaker is very different from the other in their toy preference so you may just have to experiement a bit. Have you tried skewers with the sharp tips cut off or loose popsicle sticks? Some quakers love to build.

Andreas' favourite toy is a hanging one with a banana on it made of crunchy wood. Every morning he chews off more and more of it.

Sometimes if you play a bit with the toys and make it look like you're having fun they get to understand more what toys are for.

[amilysh]

Yeah,

It took my baby quaker nearly 2 weeks to really play with a toy!

Some quakers I've learnt here prefer the building stuff like Hana mentioned or more the toys and different sort of materials like plastic or wood etc.

Cedar my quaker really loves wood and leather. Hasnt touched any of the arylic or the plastic ones!

[moonchild1970]

It took Verde 2-3 weeks to play with toys too, but his fav's are
ones with bells, ones made out of wood to chew and foraging toys. He also loves to chew up phone books!

[LuvMyHarley1]

As mentioned each bird is different from another in their toy preference... Harley is 5 years old and has never really took to playing with toys...his favorite thing is chewing paper from his paper roller and placing sticks through in and out, trying to build something....and he has these little plastic keys and plastic links that he likes to put through the bars....I tie a string to the keys and that allows him to place them where he wants to... other than that he is preening a lot...

[_Laila_]

Hmm. Well, Louie loves ripping things apart like tissues and newspaper. He was chewing at the tissue box this afternoon! But I think his favourite toy is this plastic chain thing with some rope at the end. He also really likes his rope swing, as it's right next to the chain, he goes from biting one, to the other! xD He also likes his little mirror with a bell hanging off of it. Our other bird Roxie had this scragger thing with bits of leather twined into it. He walked right up to her cage and started chewing! But now that he's got his own one, he doesn't seem half as interested in it LOL *shakes head*. Just recently we put a little container with buttons in his cage. At first he was scared of them, but now he carries them around his cage and sometimes puts them in his food bowl .

Oh, just out of curiosity, what do you guys put in foraging toys?

[Andrea5699]

It took Kiwi some time to play.. please remember if you've only had your fid a week she is not comfortable enough with you yet to play most likely.. keep encouraging her to play and introduce new toys as you go.. somewhere along the line she'll be adjsuted enough to play and may even surprise you and play with toys you'd previously thought she didnt like.. they can be choosey and change their minds lol

Give it time.. she may even be trying out her toys when nobody is around too and just hasn't shared it with you yet

[Abrahm]

Phoenix has never really been interested in his toys all too much, and I have severe limitations on what toys I can give him, as bells and mirrors are a no no for him. Anything with a bell he will have massive battles with, yelling and attacking the bell and the thing that hangs inside of it. I wouldn't have a problem with this, but when he has a bell in his cage, he becomes overly aggressive outside of his cage too, which I'm not ok with. Also, when he has mirrors in his cage, he has a tendency to violently headbutt himself in the mirror over and over again, which I can't think is good.

So through the difficulty of finding a bird toy without a bell or a mirror, he does like a toy I got him that is a wooden square with two rods running through the middle with rings on them. I've seen him playing with the rings, along with chewing the wood(also got him that one so he would chew that instead of my door frame).
Beyond that, he doesn't play with toys I get him very much

But every fid is different. Try an assortment to see what they like.

[Casey's Mom]

Like everyone else said he probably will take a while to start playing with toys. I don't remember how long it took Casey, but it was a few weeks at least I believe...

Casey's favourites are anything with leather and wood (luckily Parrotdise Perch makes makes all leather and wood toys, which Casey LOVES!) She also loves shreddable things, like the 'finger traps'

She also likes to carry around leather strips, straws, popsicle sticks, and other fun foot toys.

Abrahm brings up a good point though, some birds just can't have bells and/or mirrors as they bring out agression and cause bonding issues... so we do tend to stay away from toys with bells and mirrors.

[Yogi's_mom]

They really are little individuals aren't they

Yogi doesn't like anything with mirrors.. I think he figures it's a stranger sneaking into his camp hahahahah. Right now he's interested in finger traps, and can shred a toy with them by the time I get home from work.

Rocky loves toys with bells on the end. He looks so cute, because he'll hang the toy over his shoulders and pick at the bell part so it will make noise hehehehehe.

Both of the boys like playing with the plastic links though. They will spend all kinds of time fiddling with those. I have them hanging from all the boings, and in both of their cages.

Other than that, it's pretty much hit and miss on any given day. Some days foot toys are all the rage, other days it's the hanging things in the cage, and still others it's the attachment "on" the cage holding the hanging things lol.

Just depends on the mood the boys are in

Your little guy hasn't been with you long, so I wouldn't be throwing out anything he doesn't seem interested in right now <grin>. Once he settles in, he'll let you know which are his favourites for that week or day

Honestly, it took Yogi a very very very long time before anything got played with. I think the first thing he really liked was the roll of adding machine paper that hangs from his cage. That was all kinds of fun to play with. Rocky likes his too.

Debbie

[Uncle Zippy]

Casey's favourites are anything with leather and wood (luckily Parrotdise Perch makes makes all leather and wood toys, which Casey LOVES!) She also loves shreddable things, like the 'finger traps'

She also likes to carry around leather strips, straws, popsicle sticks, and other fun foot toys.

Maya is exactly the same. She likes a bowl with foot toys and sticks and straws and such that she carts around her cage. There are recepticle type plastic toys you can buy and fill up with smaller beak sized toys they have to forage out.

Shredable toys are always a hit too.

[Donella]

I spend hours making neat toys for Ekko to basically ignore. He will spend all day carrying a length of string or leather up his ladder to drop it and climb down to retrieve...over and over again. Sometimes i will tie a bead right in the middle of the string and he doesn't seem to mind....doesn't seem to be overly excited about it either tho.

[Glowbird]

Frost likes anything with paper rope (the kind you untwist) or cotton rope knots, but for some reason she hates sisal! She loves playing with a tiny stainless steel bucket from Greyfeather toys, which I fill with marbella rings, plastic bolts, and pacifiers. She loves playing with one of those mini plastic mugs in her bath. She's also into leather. I keep a heavy mug full of paper and wood sticks on top of her cage -- for now she just likes to take them out and chew a bit before tossing them on the floor, but I'm hoping she'll eventually build. One of her favorites is a simple toy I made out of one stainless steel eye bolt, 1 foot of SS chain, and some marbella beads and tiny rings. I screwed the eyebolt into the end of a perch, threaded the chain through it and put the beads and rings on either end. I knotted leather lace on the ends to keep them from falling off. She pulls the chain through the bolt and back again. Another favorite is a 3" acrylic ring hung from a thick leather strip. She loves pulling on it and climbing through it. I would suggesting buying a sampler pack of toy parts to see what she likes and try putting them together in different ways. But, as everyone else said, she's still getting used to her new home, so it might take a few weeks.

[Siobhan]

Clyde really likes the beaded toys with cotton rope and glasses, for some reason. He has his own pair of kiddie sunglasses with the earpieces removed (so he won't pinch himself in the hinge). He also likes anything shiny. We can give him a quarter and he'll carry it all over the place like he has a big prize. Jade likes things with bells. She'll pick the bell up in her foot and sit there and ring it like a Salvation Army bell ringer. She also likes plastic chains and foot toys. Clyde's very favorite toy is us, though. He'd rather sit on our heads and fix our hair than anything.

[Andrea5699]

Kiwi like leather, paper, wood, anything he can shred or otherwise make noise with.. interesting for those that cant have bells... we found a toy at pet smart that is all stainless steel pieces with plastic beads and calcium chunky type things on it.. its basically a birdie wind chime if you can picture it for about 8 bucks.. amybe this type of noise maker wouldn't bring out agression?

Kiwi does attack his bell but to date doesnt get aggressive with us over it so hes allowed to keep it no mirrors though hehe

[JumpinKaren]

I've been looking at all of my "stuff" recently with a different eye thanks to the suggestions from here.

I am happy to say that I've discovered a few things that Chloe will play with. She loves my chinese checkers set, chess, and mancala so far (with my supervision). The chinese checkers set is particularly good because she's been able to exercise her problem solving skills a bit (pulling the pegs out) and I can teach her some colors and prepositions! (I'm a speech therapist).

So anyways, thanks for all of the great toy recommendations!

-Karen

[SantanasMom]

I discovered that Santana is a shredder - he's happy with a paper towel. He doesn't mind the toys that are in his cage though and sometime when he thinks I'm not looking he plays with them. There has been only one toy that freaks him out and that is a small pinata type monkey. I finally just threw it away. Like everyone has been saying, every qp is different.

[Spankey's Mom]

You guys are so sweet with all your recommendations.

As for my Spankey, he LOVES bells. But he doesn't hold them in his hand. The Bell he has is at the end of a kinda short toy, which hangs from the top of the cage to just slightly below one of his favorite perches.

He hangs UPSIDE down on the perch, and actually gets his head INSIDE THE BELL as if he's wearing a hat, and then he talks, talks, talks and talks some more.

When he hears me starting to get tickled at him, he looks out of the Ball/Hat, shakes his head up and down, wears his hat again and then laughs just like I do. He's quite a treat! I do love that little green chicken!!

[truman]

This one may sound weird, but Truman absolutely loves drink lids (the kind that come on soft drinks from fast food places). I stock up at Quizno's and hang them in his cage, and he chomps them to bits. He loves chewing and pulling and tearing his adding machine paper roll too.

[amilysh]

Hey, finally got Cedar's sisal boing with a bell at the end of it...wow it's his favourite toy now! Loves so much to swing on it and plays with the bell