The Busy Box

So this toy is fantastic overall. My blue and gold macaw stays busy with it for literally hours when I fill it up with treats. It's totally macaw proof and will never break. The ONLY issue is that this is NOT a toy for a bird that has never used a forging toy before. I would reccomended clear plastic toys first to condition them to use toys like this.

It was hard to keep my Cocadoo busy. Most of his toys he easily destroyers, foraging toys were piece of cake for him. But not this one. I have put his favorite walnut inside and he is already working for 2 days to get it out. He is so busy that has no time for screaming 😂. Also it’s seams to be very durable and long lasting toy. I am very happy I found it. I actually bought all types they have, and they all are one better that the other.

Bought this for my bird, put peanuts in it. Unscrewed the box enough to put peanuts in, and the box kept falling apart, it actually got really annoying. I had to actually figure out how to hold the boxes sides while holding the screws and then hold the nuts & bolts. I think I’ll look for something a little less screwy (pun intended). Other than that, it’s a fun product for my bird, not so much me.

This was easy enough to assemble/disassemble to put treats into, but as I worked with it, I cut my skin on the edges of the metal plates. This is not a bird-safe toy. There's also plenty of opportunity for a beak to get stuck/trapped as the bird unscrews the parts and moves the plates to and fro...it's just unsafe. Of the handful of these metal/indestructible puzzle toys, this one's a miss. A couple of the others are great! This one is not.

This is one very well-thought-out bird toy! My Gray grabbed this right away, and goofed with it until he managed to open it and dump out all the contents! From then on he hasn't been very intrested. He'll pick it up, and manipulate it every time I change the contents, but he loses interest very quickly. More often than not it sits full until I change the contents rather than he changes the contents for me. I've taken it out of his cage and will remove it from his toy box for a month or so, then return it and see if his interest is renewed. I recommend this toy for medium to large nut-cracking birds - the bolts and wing nuts are too big for smaller beaks to manipulate, and even if the nuts are not tightly fastened, less strong beaks will have difficulty manipulating them. UPDATE: I put this toy back in his cage shortly after I wrote this review. He went for it right away spun the wing nuts, banged this around on the sides of his cage, and spent some time manipulating it. This morning when I got up, he was playing with it in the dark. I think he has decided he likes this toy! I'm going to continue rotating in and out of his toy box. If I could give it another star, I would!

We have a sulfur crested 'too that LOVES to dismantle toys. He isn't destructive but he likes to dismantle things. Some toys are easy to put back together, some get destroyed by his handiwork, some lose pieces... and then there is THIS toy. The wingnuts won't come off the bolts and there is plenty of "busy-bird" action. He LOVES this toy. We will be buying him something similar from the same company. This one is a winner!

Good quality, but I think the design could be better. The single bolt through the red section prevents the crossing bolt (top blue panel bolt) from ever dropping below it. So the blue panel never drops down enough for a parrot to reach in from the top or even be able to see the food inside. So the bird basically needs to unscrew the two blue panel wingnuts enough (many rotations) to actually pull the blue door away. My parrot found it interesting for a few days, but never got to the food inside and became bored with it. I think this might be better if some of the bolts disconnected in the middle to let the panel drop more, which would let the bird see the food. Or had other design changes that gave the bird a better sense of progress and let them see the food as they made progress without being able to reach it.

I have tried many a forage toy with my macaw, and I have found almost all of them wanting... most forage toys are either too small, too fragile, or too simple to really work with such a big beak. Saw these tough-looking toys and bought an assortment to see what my girl would think of them -- this box was one. It didn't take long for her to warm up to it. It's colorful enough to catch her attention, noisy enough to be fun to rattle, and big enough to easily contain a full walnut in the shell. I was concerned that the edges might be sharp, but she has been totally fine. If anything, her beak is looking especially polished from trying to reach inside to get at whatever goodies I've stashed. Her attempts to destroy it have been totally in vain -- the box has held up in the face of her most violent assaults without a scratch, all wingnuts attached. But fair warning... just a few weeks with these babies and my macaw is unscrewing perches, food bowls, and anything else she can loosen with her big beak! She's learned disassembly, problem-solving, and worst of all... persistence. I'm not sure how much longer I can contain her growing brilliance, and I fully blame these toys. I'll probably have to get more of them, just to try to delay her inevitable attempt at world domination. Buyer beware!