by marie83 » Wed May 30, 2012 4:57 am
What type of toys does he have? It's good to have something of everything in the cage on rotation of course. For example toys he can destroy, toys he can preen, toys he can bash about and make a hell of a racket with like a bell and foraging toys. If you have access to any safe, untreated trees then you can get twigs and branches off of those for him to destroy or put holes in them to hide things in. Untreated leather strips, untreated sisal ropes
You can hide food or foot toys in bowlfuls or even an unused cat litter tray of shredded paper, wrap things up in paper, hide things in small cardboard boxes, unused egg cartons are great for that and fairly cheap, you can leave them on the floor or hang them up.
You could give him a bath right before you leave the house so his first couple of hours are spent drying off and rearranging his feathers.
The radio is an excellent idea but you might want to consider putting it on a timer to switch on and off at certain times so he can get a bit of peace to take naps if you are out long hours. Also you tend to zone out of quiet background noises after a while so I'm sure birds would be similar.
Just remember that if your going to use food foraging that you need to adjust his meals so he doesn't become fat or eat too much of the wrong thing or not eat properly. Also that it will make monitoring his food intake harder if you spread it all round his cage in various toys. I try to get round that by splitting my birds food allowence into half, the first half goes into their morning meal, the second half is split into half again, one half is put into foraging and anything which hasn't been found by evening gets collected back up and put into the remaining portion of food so I can still monitor intake fairly accurately. Only do that with food that doesn't spoil though.
has to spend at least 8 hours a day on his own Monday to Friday. He has a big cage, placed in a large living room with lots of sunlight coming in through the glass sliding doors and looking onto a back yard. The cage is equipped with different type of perches, toys (which I change periodically) and - of course - he has a water bowl and different type of foods (boiled seeds, fresh fruit & veggies, pellets). I even installed a large mirror on the wall right outside the cage, for my bird to look at himself. However, my question is: is this enough for him to be entertained? One of my biggest concerns is that the house could be a little too silent for him during the day. For this reason, I tend to leave the radio on while I am at work (not loud volume). Is this good or bad? Is there any specific audio product that I could buy and play while the bird is alone? Thanks a lot for your help 
