throwing food

[richardhathe]

Any ideas on how to catch food that my macaw throws out of his dish it all ends up, on, bottom of cage, big waste

 

[Betrisher]

You don't say what kind of food you're talking about, so I'm assuming you mean pellets or seed, OK?

You could rig up a catch-tray (eg. a large baking dish) under his bowl so the food could be rescued. Or, you could get one of those seed-catcher feeders (I don't know what the brand-name is, sorry). Or, you could make your own.

My husband has made one for our Galah, who is the messiest eater out there: he just rakes his bill through the food and scatters it from left to right! Now he's got his acrylic feeder, most of the food stays inside and that's a huge saving! Hubby has almost finished Mark# version of the feeder for the Beaks (Alexandrines) who are also messy feeders. Eventually, our Lovies will have their own custom made version as well.

All you do is make a five-sided box out of acrylic sheet. On the sixth side, you put a partial barrier, which is what keeps the seed in. We routed a channel in a bit of dowel and fitted that over the edge of the acrylic barrier to make a perch - that's a bit kinder on your bird's feet. Then, in design #2, hubby made a removable drawer which has the perch at the end, but also a baffle to help keep the food inside the box.

The box needs to be roughly the same height as your bird when perched and narrow enough that he won't want to climb inside it. It also needs to be deep enough that if he rummages in his food it won't fall out. The materials we used were offcuts of acrylic sheet that we got from a local plastics shop and the appropriate glue to hold it together. Stainless steel nuts, bolts and washers hold it onto the side of the cage (it's entirely within the cage, not attached on the outside to a feeder-gate as we felt that was too chancy). We used a bit of 1" dowel for the perch, but I'd use a bit of acrylic rod next time and glue it on. Dominic has actually eaten the dowel and it needs replacing.