Chewing on their favorite perch

[Boki]

Inside of the very large cage for 2 bonded Amazons, I strategically placed an appropriate sized limb of a guava tree as a perch. The two birds love that perch and use that one to sleep on. But the problem is that they constantly gnaw at the end of the perch until the perch falls to the ground. It reached the point that I was putting a new perch in every other week.

I thought I was being clever by wrapping the edges of the perch with aluminium foil. That worked for a while until I saw that they figure out how to tear of the foil and again, time for a new perch.

I should point out that they have other things to chew up and they work on those things too. And they have other perches that they never gnaw on.

I was wondering if anyone can recommend something to cap the ends of the perch that they would not be interested in chewing. I will say that the aluminium foil wrap did do its job for more than 5 months. But I think they got smart and figured out to quickly tear it off. Prior to the use of foil, I used duct tape. they tore that off in no time at all,

Why do these birds have to be so smart?

Any suggestions to discourage them to chewing up their favorite perch?

 

[SailBoat]

Stop using tinfoil to cover the ends unless you are also interested in several very expensive trips to the Avian Professional.

Consider recutting the branch for other locations and come to the reality that Amazon's chew on stuff. The more chew sources the less any one source maybe used, or not -- that favored locations thing. Also consider cross branches that the primary branch sits on, hence ends are less important.

 

[Anita1250]

Mine will chew his perch until he falls on his a**. I have spent thousands on perches in 37 years with him. I still can't understand chewing the thing you are sitting on, but then I am not an Amazon. He also has plenty of wood and clothespins to chew. Still chews the perch. Go figure.

 

[AmyMyBlueFront]

Mine will chew his perch until he falls on his a**. I have spent thousands on perches in 37 years with him. I still can't understand chewing the thing you are sitting on, but then I am not an Amazon. He also has plenty of wood and clothespins to chew. Still chews the perch. Go figure.

Amy is clever...he'll chew on BB's perch (from outside of Beeb's condo) and leave his own alone.


Jim

 

[cnyguy]

My old YCA George used to chew through his wooden perches too, and sometimes both perch and parrot crashed to the bottom of the cage. George would laugh and act like he was thinking "oh, it's nothing-- I meant to do that." And now my CAG Scooter is intent on demolishing her rope perches; she just finished off the one I bought for $25 back in February. Tearing apart those perches is one of her favorite things to do, and she won't be discouraged.

If you ever do need to patch up a perch, vet wrap is a much better choice than foil.

 

[noodles123]

My dang bird has destroyed $95 dollars of perches in 2 months and I am ready to send her to the chokey lol (Matilda reference... forgive me).

I literally just removed and replaced her cross-cage perch AGAIN this evening because it was thin as a pencil in the middle and I was worried she might go crashing down in the night or get wedged in there is she chewed a space.

No advice here...just commiseration.

 

[wrench13]

You might try one of the extremly hard woods, like manzanita, my smaller amazon get even put a scratch on that stuff.

https://www.wood-database.com/wood-articles/top-ten-hardest-woods/

https://wooddad.com/hardest-wood-world/

 

[Ira7]

OT, but here it is anyway. Maybe it means something to someone:

Last night, Archie was in fine form out of his cage. Spirited, nothing out of the ordinary.

Back in the cage...it gets to lights out...and he’s not on his regular sleeping perch. He’s on the rope perch.

I get worried and start to freak out...three minutes later he goes to his sleeping perch...and he says, “You’re an idiot!” (Well, he didn’t actually say that, but the look he gave me did.)

I just took the experience as a lesson, and maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t think most birds casually change their sleeping perch, and it’s a signal of something wrong.

 

[Boki]

Thanks for all of the replies. It is comforting to know that others have this same problem. I will just keep replacing them and maybe try new types of wood.

 

[Anita1250]

The manzanita ones are good. Sam just removes the bark from them, but can't really chew them up. I just have a hard time finding ones that fit right.