For our 14th foraging Friday I will be reviewing the Featherland Paradise 3 Pull Out Drawers Creative Foraging System. This bird toy is pretty much exactly what it looks like - that being a set of 3 hanging drawers that each open in a different direction. (Note that this toy does come with some leather strips hanging from the bottom piece, but these can easily be untied and removed for rat safety, which is what I did before giving it to them.)
This toy is fairly easy for rats to use, as they just have to pull open a drawer to get to the goodies inside. Despite this it still has a bit of challenge for them - for one, the drawers swing back and forth due to being mounted on a free-hanging chain, making the opening of the drawers a bit more difficult. The drawers also each open in a different direction, ensuring the rats can't just open one after another and then chow down on all the treats at once. The drawers are also fairly deep, meaning that even once open the rats have to put some effort into getting the bottom treats out. You can even heighten the challenge here by adding in some crinkled paper or tissues on top of the treats - this ensures that the rats will have to dig some on top of opening up the drawers, and adds more value to this (and many other foraging toys) once the rats have mastered the main idea. Like many of the Featherland Paradise foraging toys this foraging toy is also fairly easy to refill. Cleaning it is also pretty easy, but I'm always wary of water getting stuck behind the drawers and so I've only wiped it off, never fully washed it. Accessing the drawers themselves however is very easy and because of this I have used this toy multiple times to help encourage my rats to forage even for their regular lab blocks. There are very few downsides to this toy otherwise, with the biggest downside for me being that once open, the drawers no longer provide any foraging. So once your rats know how to open up the drawers it is easy for them to just pop one open and empty it then and there. This is somewhat negated by the drawers opening on different sides, and you can further negate it by adding in some crinkled paper, but it does still bring it down a notch compared to some of my other foraging toys that revert back to being closed once the rat lets go of them, thus providing more foraging opportunity. Overall this foraging toy is a fun and creative way to enrich rat lives, and while it is a bit simple the rats seem to enjoy it and that is good enough for me. I mentioned that I use it for lab blocks most of the time, and that is probably my favorite thing about it - I find that quite a few foraging toys just can't fit lab blocks and so when I find one that does I tend to use it quite a bit. Currently this toy is one of the foraging toys giving my rats their lab blocks in the cage, and I'm glad that having a few of these toys allows me to switch them up in order to keep the rats on their toes. Link to this foraging toy: https://amzn.to/2LPfN35 Video showcasing this foraging toy:
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AboutHey there! Here you will find tips and tricks on rat care and training, along with information not found elsewhere on this site. If you have questions or suggestions for me, feel free to contact me through the contact page. Archives
October 2021
CategoriesDisclosure: Esther (and her website Shadow The Rat) is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com
|