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CHAPTER 9 - BUDGIE TOYS/GYMs


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They're sooo easy to make!

Budgies love toys.  Period.  You should always provide them with toys to amuse, fling around, beak up and more.

Of course, you can buy toys.  Consider these super offerings:


But!  Did you know you could make them too?

Indeed you can.  If you have some beads, twine, dollar-store items etc., you can make some really nifty things indeed.  Some words of warning, however, NEVER use anything coated with Zinc (check your paperclips!) as that can cause metal poisoning in birdies, and be very very very careful with things that fray.  It can be ingested and kill your parakeet.  

Here are some resources about that:

Let's begin with:

Birdie Toy Ideas

Do you make sandwiches for your kids for school?  If so, do you use wheat bread and cut off the crusts?

Budgies in general (okay, my flock in specific) love wheat bread!  I take those crusts, stack them up, tie them in the middle with twine, and then hang it up from their gym for their beaking pleasure. 

Want other ideas?  Look at all the great stuff listed below!

Birdie Toy Parts


Want to really make sure that leather you're using is untreated, that wood is bird-safe and more?  Visit

Twin Leather

They've got great resources available!

And don't forget:

Birdie Gyms

A birdie gym is simply a "thing" on which your parakeet can play.  I made my own with Tinker Toys; the wooden ones are great to use.   Since I didn't want to spend full price, I did the eBay route like so:

Here are some recipes for making your own birdie gym.

And here are birdie gyms for sale:



It's so nice to have so many great options for your birdies.  Do take the time to make or buy great toys for parakeet - they'll thank you for them.

Let's now digress from one budgie to budgies....of the opposite sex.  Many times, people will think, oh how cute, I can have budgie babies!  If this is you, I urge you really NOT to allow them to breed unless you're extremely serious about raising the results.  After all, there's no shortage of budgies, and even hand-raised parakeets cannot be sold profitably.  Think about it...if you've spent weeks and weeks hand-taming baby parakeets, would you want them to go to possibly clueless buyers?

Be that as it may, there might be times the inevitable happens.  Thus, let's now turn to:

Next > Chapter 10 - Budgie Breeding


More info


Parakeets/budgies/keets/etc. are NOT disposable birds!  Please do your research before choosing to share your life with one of these wonderful birdies..

The Ultimate Internet Parakeet Toolkit

Copyright 2007 Barbara Ling and Owlbert
http://www.barbaraling.com