Safety in Links

As bird owners we love to spoil our birds with new toys and cage accessories. There is nothing like adding in some new toys to your bird's cages and watching them light up and have fun destroying their enrichment. What can possibly go wrong? When we are looking at our toys one thing we can forget to check is how we are attaching the toys to the cage. It can be easy to look over how we attach toys to the cage can impact our birds. For smaller species it can be fairly common to see Snap Hook Carabiners especially on toys that are purchased from large retail vendors online.

These hooks might seem like a quick and convenient way to attach a toy to a cage, however they are not a safe option for this purpose. Some of our more curious birds might find that the hardware is just as fun to play with the toy and if they are able to open and manipulate the clip the snapping bit can easily get stuck on or under their beak which can lead to injury. A safer option to use would be pear links, but you do need to consider the size of your bird. I recently discovered my Goffins cockatoo can easily bend pear links and rip the piece that keeps it closed off, after years of no interest. We upgraded all of her toys to a quick C link and these have worked very well for her strong beak. We carry both pear links and C links in store and online if you notice you might need to swap out any of your hardware on your bird toys!