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A good cockatoo perch?

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A good cockatoo perch?

Postby jeks1984 » Mon Apr 04, 2016 7:38 pm

I've seen a few rather expensive sites like http://www.coastaldriftwood.com/main.sc and eBay runs about the same. I found a few cheap little shops like https://squareup.com/store/drifton but now i just need to know is, what i should get for a more natural look to the inside of the cage.

The cage size is 110 in deep x 61 in long x 79 in. and very large Cockatoo that has been stuck in small cage for years. When my wife brought it home i felt so bad for its living conditions, i spent 1500 dollars on the cage. Got a local pet shop helping me with most of the small stuff but, their inventory of perches look really fake. I spent all of this money on the cage so i want it to look cool of course. With that said, i did spend a lot on it and I'm not looking to spend over a few hundred on a good perch.

I know I can make my own but, I'm really hung up on driftwood. I've read as long as its been properly disinfected its fine for bird cages. Would like some feedback. Thanks in advance.
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Re: A good cockatoo perch?

Postby Chantilly » Mon Apr 04, 2016 10:37 pm

Hi Jeks!
Thankyou for saving this cockatoo and giving it proper housing and a good home!
If you wanted a driftwood perch (I can imaging it would be destroyed fast?) ,were I you, I'd just collect my own. To disinfect wood you can cook it in the oven at 180°C for about 30-45 minutes.
Hopefully this helps :)
And anthough she be little, she is fierce ~Shakespeare
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Re: A good cockatoo perch?

Postby Wolf » Tue Apr 05, 2016 8:10 am

The problem with using driftwood is that it can be very difficult to tell what kind of wood that it is and that could easily be a disaster since not all woods are safe for our birds and some are quite toxic. Great for looks, I would have to agree. I think that it is much better to find a source of free bird safe wood that you can get a few branches of that still have the bark on them and your bird will love them as they are good for their feet, help to trim their nails and with them chewing on them they will have nice pretty and finely honed beaks.
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Re: A good cockatoo perch?

Postby Pajarita » Tue Apr 05, 2016 12:27 pm

One of my cockatoos brought a perch in his cage that was nothing but a piece of untreated 2x2 with a hole drilled on one side with a screw that had no head inserted in it that would stick out and go through the bars with two fender washers (one inside and one outside the cage) and the normal bolt thingies that look like a double key kind of thing (I don't know the name but Wolf might be able to help).

When I first saw it, I pooh poohed at it, thinking it was just plain cheap and lazy of his previous owners to use this (it didn't even have any notches on it or anything, it was just a 2x2 with the normal edges and everything) but as the days went by (I never change their cages when they first come to me), I realized it was actually a strike of genius on their part because he would spend hours chewing it while he perched on it until it was an amorphous piece of wood all chewed up and uneven but so easy and inexpensive to replace! So now, both my toos have them (they also have sweetfeet perches as well as tree branches) . The thing with toos is that you need to provide LOTS of chewing material and they are not satisfied with soft things like cardboard (which most other parrots love), they like wood and, if they don't have enough available, they will chew your moldings, doors, furniture, etc. I also give them giant cardboard boxes (I buy a lot of stuff from Amazon) with 'stuff' in them like pieces cut from a 2X4, pine shims, kindling and even pinecones all mixed up with scrunched up pieces of paper - they like to have different chewing material in a few places.
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Re: A good cockatoo perch?

Postby Wolf » Tue Apr 05, 2016 9:54 pm

The bolts that Pajarita is referring to are called hanger bolts and they have a coarse wood thread on one end and a machine thread on the other end that you can use a regular hex or square nut or a wing nut on. I use them for my tree branch perches.
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Re: A good cockatoo perch?

Postby Pajarita » Wed Apr 06, 2016 10:58 am

AHA! Wing nut is the name! Thanks, Wolf, I never knew the name for them and now I do! :D
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Re: A good cockatoo perch?

Postby seagoatdeb » Wed Apr 06, 2016 10:11 pm

I would never use driftwood for a Cockatoo unless you know what kind of wood it is. Many woods are toxic to parrots and Cockatoos really can chew.
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Re: A good cockatoo perch?

Postby Chantilly » Sat May 07, 2016 3:53 am

Wolf wrote:The problem with using driftwood is that it can be very difficult to tell what kind of wood that it is and that could easily be a disaster since not all woods are safe for our birds and some are quite toxic. Great for looks, I would have to agree. I think that it is much better to find a source of free bird safe wood that you can get a few branches of that still have the bark on them and your bird will love them as they are good for their feet, help to trim their nails and with them chewing on them they will have nice pretty and finely honed beaks.

seagoatdeb wrote:I would never use driftwood for a Cockatoo unless you know what kind of wood it is. Many woods are toxic to parrots and Cockatoos really can chew.

Thats a really really good point, I would not have thought about that (I do when cutting a branch to use for them, but wouldnt have thought of that for drift wood.)
And anthough she be little, she is fierce ~Shakespeare
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Re: A good cockatoo perch?

Postby Wolf » Sat May 07, 2016 6:56 am

The reason that most people would not have thought about it either is that by the time that you find a larder piece of driftwood to cut pieces off of for perches most of the sap has been leeched out if not all of it. if you can tell what kind of wood that the driftwood is then some of them could be fine but some tree woods are toxic not because of the sap but because of the wood itself. Usually by the time that I find a piece of driftwood I can't tell what tree it came from. If you know someone it the lumber industry you might ask them if they recognize the wood. If you have a university or college nearby and if they have a botany department someone there might be able to identify the type of wood that it is. Then all you have to do is compare that to the list of safe woods.
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Re: A good cockatoo perch?

Postby Navre » Sat May 07, 2016 8:19 am

Pajarita wrote:One of my cockatoos brought a perch in his cage that was nothing but a piece of untreated 2x2 with a hole drilled on one side with a screw that had no head inserted in it that would stick out and go through the bars with two fender washers (one inside and one outside the cage) and the normal bolt thingies that look like a double key kind of thing (I don't know the name but Wolf might be able to help).

.


I should make these for Bucca and Cheerio, our M2 and U2. Cheerio, especially, loves to chew up wood. I might actually use a 2x3 or 2x4 for him.
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