how do you teach a bird to forage?

[coral]

My parrot just doesn't seem to know what to do when i hide a treat under some paper or something hes not even interested lol
any advice?

[entrancedbymyGCC]

Make it even easier! you could start by just moving the food around to different locations in the cage, or cover it but have a big hole in the paper. They seem to do better once they realize they really can get food that way and then they become willing to work harder.

[coral]

okay ill trey that!

[patdbunny]

If you have a cross cut shredder you can shred some plain white paper and do a light sprinkling of the shreds onto his seed so he has to dig around the shreds.

[kaylayuh]

My birds learned to forage on their own. Now they through their food on the carpet and go play with/eat it down there. I vacuum daily, but I can't keep up with their silliness and they seem fine.

[GlassOnion]

It really helps to have a shallow dish with shredded newspaper/toilet paper and sprinkle some seeds on it. At first your bird will peck the visible seeds but sooner or later he'll make his way through the paper to reach the ones underneath!

[TheNzJessie]

use something to hide there food in thats edidable, i use capsicums and jango loved it, hes munching away at the capsicum then gets all happy when he relises thew rasins inside =p, i also use pinecones

jango is a pro at capsicums (bell peppers) now that i ahve started precutting the holes in them and then freezing them, makes them a lot harder to work at back still very rewarding.

for beginner forgegers when weaving frutis and veges between cage bars is forgating or screwering fruits and hangong them up, if you're bird likes hiding in places put some food in a box with a hole cut out that he/she can fit in.

little rasian boxes hung up in the cage stuffed with bits of food but left open are great too

you can buy flax baskets or bags of different shapes and sizes you can put foor in then and zip tie them to the side of the cage

buy a stainless steel skewer and scewer bottletops into it and put stuff inside the bottle tops.

get a pice of browse (tree branch with the leaves on) put a tiny bit of honey on some of the leave (for beginners do the outside for experts work into the middle leave the harder to get ones) and stick seed onto the leaves. you can also tie the little flax or wicker baskets onto the branches of the browse and put goodies inside


hope this was help

[coral]

Those are all awesome ideas! spring break is next week and im already thinking of a bunch of stuff im going to make my baby bird Thanks everyone!