Manzanita has become the preferred wood by many bird owners for making bird perches and toys. Are manzanita bird perches as good as people say they are?
Choosing The Right Perch is Important for Your Bird’s Happiness and Health
Parrots and other birds spend most of their lives on a perch with their weight on their feet, so choosing the right perch for your bird is very important for the bird’s comfort and health. The right perch will help keep your bird’s feet and leg muscles in good shape and help prevent problems like bumble foot, arthritic feet and atrophy.
Straight wooden dowels or PVC pipe are often used for bird perches since they are abundant, cheap, and easy to install in a bird cage. But this isn’t always best for your birds. The straight uniform shape and diameter keeps your bird’s feet in the same position all the time they are perching. Not only is this boring and unnatural for the bird, it can also lead to health problems.
Manzanita bird perches are made from natural manzanita branches, which usually come in irregular shapes and have a varied surface and diameter. This is more like the branches the birds would be perching on in the wild. The varied terrain of the manzanita branch is not only more enjoyable for the bird, it helps to exercise their feet and legs.
Manzanita Bird Perches Resist Chewing
If you are familiar with exotic birds, such as parrots, you probably know what these little feathered wood chippers can do to wood. These birds love to chew on things and their sharp powerful beaks are no match for most wood. One of these birds with plenty of free time on its wings can quickly shred a wooded perch or wooden toys to sawdust.
Manzanita is one of the hardest natural woods in the world. Some say it is the 8th hardest wood and some claim it is the 7th while others claim it is the 6th hardest. I haven’t found any good consistent information to confirm which it is, but the point is, it is a very hard dense wood. So hard that it and even it’s bark will resist even the most persistent bird’s chewing better than most woods.
Chewing birds need to chew to maintain the health of their beaks, their muscles and their mental health. With manzanita bird perches and toys they can safely chew all they want and the wood will last a long time. Manzanita wood is non toxic, which is very important for many exotic birds since they are easily poisoned by common materials used by humans. Your bird can chew on natural manzanita all they want without any fear of being poisoned.
Manzanita has a smooth reddish bark that becomes hard after the branch has been harvested and dries. Manzanita bird perches are used both with the bark on or with the bark sandblasted off. Both the wood and bark surfaces are a good surface for perching. It’s comes down to more of a visual preference for the owner. Some like the bark and others like the whitish wood underneath.