Guest Author - Denise Lacazette

If you own a wood chewer, you will love this product. With an average of ten parrots hanging around my house on any given day it can get really expensive purchasing chewable wood toys for them. I absolutely believe in activity and enrichment entertainment for exotic animals so finding an inexpensive alternative to store-bought has been vital. The plain wood blocks and toys I have been making were acceptable to the parrots for a few weeks, but their interest definitely waned despite providing new ones in rotation.

There are 9 colors available of the color concentrate. You can also purchase a sample of all 9 like I did. The concentrate is diluted with water or rubbing alcohol at a ratio of 1:15. The colors in the sample box are Navidad Red, Crash Orange, Chico Yellow, Liberty Spring Green, Darby Green, Vida Teal, Romeo Blue, Sandy’s Favorite Purple, and Zazu Pink. The colors were beautiful and what you would expect for each name. The sample box even came with preprinted labels to put on the container you mix the concentrate in so you can store the mixture and use it later without guessing what the color is.

I mixed a couple of color solutions in wide mouth mason jars. I did half of the colors with water and the other half with rubbing alcohol. The instructions say that you can use a sponge brush or dipping to color your items. I dipped some blocks and used a regular artist paintbrush for the others. Both methods worked well. I preferred the alcohol diluted color blocks – they dried more quickly and I believe colored more evenly. Getting even more creative, I took some empty paper towel rolls and brushed the alcohol-diluted colors onto them. They turned out great! I colored several pounds of blocks and tubes in an hour that were ready to thread on sisal almost immediately. (The water-colored did take longer to dry although they could be threaded within an hour of dipping. By morning they were fully dry and ready to use).

The real test was the next morning when I let the birds into the playroom. There was an immediate rush to “check out” the new things hanging from their play room ceiling. Obviously the colored blocks and tubes were much more noticeable and attractive to them. The colors are not flavored so they can be used for any wood chewer like rabbits, guinea pigs, and rats to add visual appeal.

This product is definitely Editor Recommended!

VitaCritter
PO Box 1
New Richmond, WI 54017