#bird toys

Make your own ladders!

Rajah loves ladders. Without them, he would probably always be stranded somewhere. (Roshni and Burfi like ladders too, but they also like to scream for help. Poor Rajah just quietly accepts his fate to be stuck.) The only problem is, pet stores don’t have really really long ladders! So here’s how I made my own.

What you need:

• Two long sticks — branches, bamboo, dowels work great!

• A lot of small sticks — I’ve used branches, dowels, and nontoxic pencils. 

• Lots of twine!! You can also try tape, but the birds will probably destroy it pretty quick (not even duct tape is free from my birds’ beaks).


First, I measured the distance from the cage door to the floor. Since my birds like their ladders leaning quite a bit, I added a few inches. My longest ladder is about 3½ ft. Then, I estimated how wide I wanted the ladder to be. If you have a few birds, make sure you make it pretty wide so they don’t run into each other while they’re climbing haha. Finally, see what distance your birds are comfortable with stepping up, I have cockatiels so I kept the spaces between steps pretty small. With smaller spacing, you’ll need more rungs on your ladder — I used about 15.


For your materials, you can go branch hunting in your backyard and use gardening shears to cut them to size. Michaels also has dowels, and I got bamboo sticks from Dollarama! Also. I tried using colourful nontoxic pencils but it was a bad idea. I ended up having to cut the pencil part down because Rajah kept eating them.

Here’s how I go about assembling them:

• Lay out the long sticks on the floor, keeping the space you want between them.
• Gather up your small dowels/sticks, and lay them on top of the two long ones. Make sure you keep the spacing close enough for your birds to climb on without trouble!

• Cut some twine! Doubling up the thread makes tying faster.

• Starting at one end, hold the small dowel in place and wrap the twine around both dowels/sticks. Tie a knot.

• Now wrap it around the other side, hold it tight, and tie a knot. 


• Wrap it around a couple more times on both sides, you don’t have to tie knots. Unless your bird loves chewing through knots, then you probably need to keep it more secure!

• Once the two dowels seem pretty secure, you can tie a final double knot!
  

• Do this like 30 more times. Make sure you have a movie or something on, or else you’ll start crying about your lot in life as a parrot maid.
• You can choose whether to work your way by rung or by side, they both take about the same time. I think I spent like an hour on my first ladder, but if you get someone to help you it should take around half an hour to finish!

• Put up the ladder and enjoy! You might need to tighten the knots every once in awhile. My tiels like to move the rungs around when the knots get loose, and then they get upset when the ladder’s all crooked.

There you go! No more stranded birds!