Pip, everyone will have an opinion about this. Here is mine. I’m going to write a lot, because everything is relative, and only you can look at your situation and decide what to do. What works for someone else might not work for you.
Everything is a matter of degree. Doctors will agree that medicine and poison are the same thing - everything depends on the dose. If you drink too much water, you will die. If you don’t drink any water, you will die. There are different levels of “clean room”. To make semiconductor chips, you need a space with ZERO particles of dust. To run a test lab for Ebola, you need a space with ZERO chance of contamination. But to raise a healthy child, you need some exposure to germs, dirt, animals, allergens…because the human immune system needs what‘s dangerous. Children who grow up with pets often have fewer serious allergies later in life, because the immune system has learned not to overreact, while also learning what germs will make us sick.
So. Quarantining a new bird is hard to do perfectly, but we do the best we can. Chances are, a new bird might not be sick, and someone will get away with just keeping it in a different room. But a new bird could have something terrible, like Pacheco’s, and if the quarantine isn’t good all the birds in the house will get sick. The vet might be tired of telling people how to do quarantine right only to see them cut corners. Or they might be a jerk.
Soap and water will kill most germs, because most germs have a lipid-containing membrane. Lipids are fats, and soap molecules attach to the fat molecules and break apart the membrane, killing the germ. This is why it’s so important to wash our hands with soap to prevent the spread of disease. You can wash the toys and the things you make them with with soap and water, rinsing them very thoroughly to get all the soap residue out. Use a neutral soap without scent. Wash your hands before handling toys. Assemble the on a clean table in a separate room from all other pets, especially birds. Some things like wood and rope have too many crevices and pores to be cleaned, so putting them in a 175F oven for a couple hours will sterilize them. Then they can go right into a clean plastic bag so they will stay clean. It’s still important to wash items before heating that might have chemicals on them, because heat won’t remove dirt and chemicals. And there are always some mold spores that can survive heating.
The toys won’t remain sterile, but they will probably be safe. There used to be a website called My Safe Bird Store, and you can check sites like that to see what they recommend. I use stainless steel chains, bells, hangers, clips, etc. which are easy to disinfect. I heat wood, sisal rope, branches, anything like that in the oven. I keep the cleaned materials in plastic crates. Plastic and metal can usually be sterilized in boiling water.
I buy supplies in stores and online, and I assume they are contaminated. A spool of sisal role might look clean, and be clean enough for me to use for myself, but I wouldn’t put in in a bird toy without checking it. I smell it, because some things are manufactured using chemicals. The company might treat the rope with insecticide, or spray the warehouse with rat poison, or there could be mold spores from damp storage. Your nose is pretty sensitive, and you will probably be able to smell chemicals and mildew. I wash /heat materials right before I use them. Putting stuff in the sunlight is also good, the UV light doesn’t kill germs, but it disrupts the DNA so they can’t reproduce properly.
Store the finished toys in clean packaging or totes, and try not to make too much in advance. Keep everything as clean as you can, and make sure you tell your customers about it. People will appreciate buying toys that are safe for their birds and be willing to pay a little more.
