It is actually a lot easier than you think. Your feathered companions are naturally curious. Natural toys simulates the natural environment, encouraging them to forage, therefore chewing and shredding through a toy. Some may do this to see what's inside, solve a problem or even just for fun.
Natural Toys from A Toy A Day
Our toys are designed to help stimulate our feather friend's minds. They are very smart birds and they love to problem solve. We find what works for us is through their favourite treats. This may or may not work for you but the same concept can be applied.
For us, we just simply hide their favourite treats in the toy. You may not want to 'hide' the treats if this is the introduction of natural toys to your birds. You can make it really obvious for them just to make them interested.
This is what we did with ours to get them started.
We prepared a few sunflower seeds. We will then hide this in the toy. For these example, we'll be making it obvious like how we would do it as a 1st introduction for our birds.
Because the natural material of our toys are soft, it's easy to push the sunflower seed into the toy. In this example, we used the Sola ball. It's one of the easiest material for making foraging toys. You can push a sunflower seed into Balsa blocks too, another material that we like to use for our natural toys.
And finally, you have a natural toy with some treats. As you can see from this example, we made it very obvious for our birdies. This will keep them wondering if there is more and therefore encouraging them to shred and forage through the toy. Its a good way to get started and majority of the time once they've started, they won't stop.
What if our birds aren't treat-motivated?
We hear you and thus suggest that this same concept works if you've identified what your birdie is motivated by. For example, if your birds want what you have, you can try by playing with the toy yourself. They may get curious and wonder why their human is so interested in the toy. As you are their source of motivation, they are very likely to want to interact with the toy as you interact with it.
So it's a matter of identifying what motivates them and you can be creative on how to encourage them to play with natural toys using this concept.