Are magazines safe to chew on? (for parrots that is)

[pchela]

My birds would love nothing more than to get their beaks on my magazines and I have tons of old ones which would provide hours of fun shredding for them... problem is, I do not know if they are safe. I can not find a definitive answer online about what kind of ink is used in color magazines such as Entertainment Weekly. Does anybody know if they are safe or not?

[Titanius]

Proceed with caution. You only really want to have your bird messing with soy based ink magazines and stuff like that. The other commercial stuff like the well known magazines that are very crisp and glossy can (in this day and age) have lead, petroleum and p-Anisidine in their makeup. So yea that's a big can of worms to better just avoid unless you're really sure.

If your birds are attracted to bright colors have you ever thought about getting plain computer paper and dripping it with food colouring?

[kellybird]

I was wondering the same thing but about the phone books. I would assume they are okay because my vet had a cockatoo in the waiting room and had a huge phone book hanging for him and it was all shredded, but I worry too about the dyes and still havent used it. But why would a vet and there is an avian vet there??? Anyone else???

[pchela]

In searching for what magazines are made of I did come across an article that said phone book ink is soy based so they should be fine to chew on.

[kellybird]

oh thanks thats good to know! I guess I could probaly even contact them to find out. I sure do get a lot of them so that would be nice to hang in the cage!! Thanks!

[ptuga72]

Do they say what they coat the paper in (to make it shiny)? I know that the glossy ads aren't good for birds because the coating is actually plastic. I'd be curious if magazines are the same. If they are safe, I know of 4 birds that are getting lots to shred!