Which one is safest?

[Cockatielsongs]

Which one is safer for handmade bird toys?

[marie83]

Food dye, personally I would use home made vegetable dye though to avoid all the artificial rubbish in the dyes.

Steer clear of paint. I was looking into restoring an old cage a while ago and came to the conclusion paint is just not worth the risk.

[laducockatiel]

Food dye, personally I would use home made vegetable dye though to avoid all the artificial rubbish in the dyes.

Steer clear of paint. I was looking into restoring an old cage a while ago and came to the conclusion paint is just not worth the risk.

+1

[Polarn]

Depends though. With paint that is. I'm currently looking into designing a couple of cages that meets the minimum sizes allowed to keep birds in. While there are some cages sold here that's pretty big their usually not of a size legal to keep the bigger birds In and the bar spacing is too big to keep the smaller ones. An example is minimum allowed cage size for a cockatiel is 120x70cm and 80cm high. You can get a cage this size but as mentioned they can usually get through the bars. So what I'm currently looking into is a decent deal on the powder to powder coat the cages. But there is powder coats that are considered bird safe and it is actually surprisingly cheap to powder coat something compared to spraying solvent based paint (which isn't bird safe). But since your having food coloring there I'm suspecting your not thinking of restoring a cage but dying toys etc.

Ps. I know stainless steel would be the better option and I wish I had the workshop for it, but I would have to get new welding equipment, and the material cost is quite a lot more.