Resin Perches

Cosmographer

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Anyone know about resin and parrot safety?

I'm thinking of having resin perches made. This is the same company that makes resin stones, trees, and statues for Disneyland and other parks.

The company says the material is a type of food-grade plastic fiber. They gave me a free sample and it is quite hard. I stabbed repeatedly with a steak knife and made only tiny indentations. There was a miniscule amount of dust from those indentations.

Any thoughts?
 

noodles123

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Not sure-- my parrot can chew through plastic links if she wants to. The dust concerns me---All of Noodles hard, plastic c-links have to get replaced often because she roughs them up so badly.

Is there a reason you want to use resin as opposed to something like manzanita?
 

Owlet

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I would say no. I dont know what specific resin is used but typically resin is toxic and not made to be chewed on or digested. I unknowingly bought one awhile ago and it was painted and everything to look like a real branch. Went straight into the garbage and it goes a negative review on amazon because no where did it say it wasnt a real branch and marketed itself as such
 

noodles123

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ParrotWizard makes custom width and length perches if you are just looking for something that will fit your custom-cage.
 
OP
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Unfortunately, hard woods like manzanita have proven difficult to find in my region. I tried to order from parrot wizard but they aren't shipping internationally at this time.
 

SailBoat

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I'm at a total loss for the why one would have custom (expensive!?) "Resin" perches made? If your reason is that your Parrot chews its wood perches and you want something they cannot turn into tiny pieces you are missing the reasoning behind providing 'natural' wood tree branches with their bark removed and properly cleaned.

We provide them this so they can expend energies in a semi-productive means, compared to them barbering, plucking, or mutilating they bodies or other non-productive means.
 
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I'm in the Philippines.

I don't think it's missing the point to say that one would want an indestructible perch as long as other chewable options are provided. Bamboo, coconut, ropes, etc will all be made available. (Sometimes even acacia branches tho they can be expensive). I'm looking for a perch that will last. This is meant to be a large tree perch so making it out of real wood would be too expensive in the long run (assuming my macaw turns out to be a prodigious chewer). I have contacts at the fabricators that make it not nearly as expensive as it might be in the states.

I haven't tried stabbing acrylic yet, but I would assume that would also produce a tiny amount of dust from the gouging? I'm most worried about the dust as I'm pretty sure she won't be to chew off any pieces.
 
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Here's a really zoomed in pic of a sample piece they sent me. The bigger white markings in the middle of the pic are the stab marks made with a sharp knife. (Stabbing pretty hard). The smaller white marks to the upper right of that cluster is the dust. To give scale, the knife marks are each about the diameter of a needle. In person the dust particles are barely visible.

No idea if this helps or not, but just thought I'd put it out there.

cosmographer-albums-cage-picture22603-20200710-002606.jpg
 

noodles123

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IF you have lots of other things to chew on in the cage, he may not mess with his perch as much...I would honestly go with real wood...Another thought-- some companies that don't ship internationally will ship to a cerrier company that will....like an intermediary. I know that gets expensive, but I imagine that custom resin perches wouldn't be cheap either.

Aside from the toxic risk, it is going to be hard for them to mold a material like this into a shape/texture that creates variation etc without being too smooth or too rough....I imagine that it could cut your birds feet if it is as hard as you say and they try to add natural "bark" texture to it. At the same time, you don't want it totally smooth...so real wood seems like the way to go...since that dust could be ingested or inhaled and you really don't know what it's made of exactly..and what happens if it gets wet repeatedly? The color alone is likely something like a paint or stain..just seems like to many unknowns
 

noodles123

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Ebay has a bunch of unused stuff but DK price conversions for your currency.

https://www.ebay.ph/sch/i.html?_odk...trksid=m570.l1313&_nkw=manzanita&_sacat=20734

You want to make sure you get an unused perch and find out whether the people selling it can tell you where it came from/verify that it is actually safe...I try to avoid buying things with homes that already have pet parrots unless they store the supplies away from their homes (due to disease risk via feather dust). It looks like a lot of the are coming from the USA, and I would venture to say that whoever is buying them likely is getting them from a parrot place or something (just a guess...could be wrong) but seems like they wouldn't go through the trouble of importing if the product wasn't real...
 

SailBoat

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Good points regarding use on a play stand.

FYI: Duplicating the working of a Beak is not easy. Personally, I would not use a steak knife as a stabbing action is not a like test. Parrots use a crushing /grinding action. With wood, they first crush into the wood and then applying a grinding action to separate the wood fibers. For a test at home, likely an adjustable set of pliers. They commonly have an area with ridges for griping a nut that could be used to determine force resistance.

My understanding of Resin for this kind of use is that it is like concrete in that it binds the Reinforcement Bars or more likely here Filaments together to create shape and structural strength. Which would be much like how fiberglass and epoxy works. I have seen what you are talking about used to create rock appearing structures for a wide cross-section of applications.

Will be interesting to see the end result and how it stands up to the force of a Mac at Work! :D
 
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