Sunday, March 15, 2015

Skewer refilling time

I think it's been quite some time since I had an entry about homemade or purchased toys. I know there have been two orders that I never got around taking pictures of before I handed the toys to the birds and I haven't really been in a toy-making kind of mind lately.

However, last week-end I sat down and did prepare some toys; I simply refilled most of my skewers with pine slats/blocks, beads and natural wood toys. The easiest homemade toys ever.

While these don't look fancy, they are always a success with the flock and I really don't have an excuse to not prepare them, as it does not take long. There is also no rope to knot, which, if you do work with poly rope, can be irritating after a while.

These skewers also allow me to reuse some of the materials that weren't completely chewed off in their previous incarnation, so it helps to avoid waste.

I have a variety of skewers; I love the small corkscrew skewer for the smaller Pois and I have a large one for Léa (although this particular one won't be shown below as it still was in Léa's cage with stuff to chew on). I also have skewers from Expandable Habitats in a number of sizes; from two huge ones, quite a few large ones and a number of small ones.

The (small) corkscrew skewers:

(The one with red balls will go to Joey and Pixel; the one with the pink ball to Shade and the one with the yellow ball to Zuri. Petey's skewer was still in his cage with wood to chew)

The huge Expandable Habitats skewer:

(Only one pictured, as the other one was still full and in use in one of the spare cages in the orange room)

The large Expandable Habitats skewers:



The small Expandable Habitats skewers:



The wood used to fill the skewers came from a number of places. Most of the blocks on the huge skewers are from Mother Pluckin' Bird Toys. There was some balsa blocs too, that came from Things for Wings. The natural wood coins were also from Things for Wings. The wooden beads were mostly from Woodworks. finally, the pine slats were either cut by me or were ordered from Crystal's Bird Toys when the store closed down.

And because I don't feel like starting a new post just for these, here are two pictures of toys I've made at one point over this past winter. 



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