I will avoid gorey and unnecessary details, but recently my sun conure, Faust, contracted nearly-fatal lead poisoning. After much searching I found the culprit, which was a toy. I HAVE had this toy tested and it came back positive for small traces of lead.

If you own a bird that chews (you know, most parrots) I encourage you to remove this toy from your bird's cage, so your buddy doesn't get sick like mine did.

This is a picture of the toy:

[IMG]http://i663.photobucket.com/albums/uu359/Turret/IMG_0036-1.jpg[/IMG]

[IMG]http://i663.photobucket.com/albums/uu359/Turret/IMG_0037-1.jpg[/IMG]

It comes from the following line of bird toys, at least one other has also tested positive for small traces of lead:

http://prevuepet.com/items.asp?category_id=22

As I said, the amount of lead in of itself is small, but as any parrot owner knows they chew, which means they might swallow the pieces like mine did. Even though it was small, the lead ingested was more than enough to be nearly-lethal!

From the website: "is made of 100% safe, non-toxic materials."

>:| That's sad. There should be most thorough testing for pets' toys for shit like lead before they're put out onto the market. Sometimes I read stuff like "make sure not to buy a cage/toys that contains lead" and it makes me think why the fuck would they allow them to contain lead in the first place.

Poor bird, at least it was only nearly fatal instead of...fatal.

Oh dear, that's really awful. Thankfully all the birds I have don't really chew on anything that's not plants/organic type of things..

Yes, Faust was very brave and survived 67.7 micrograms per deciliter of lead in his gizzard. The vets at Tufts were shocked to say the least. XD

I have contacted the company, but I'm getting the run around of "All of our cages are made from safe materials!" "What about your toys?" "...All of our cages are made from safe materials! =D"

Not too thrilled, to say the least, but as long as I can keep other birds from getting sick. =/

How awful! I'm not a bird owner but I AM a bird lover and it makes me sad that the manufacturers of that toy could be so damn careless. I'm glad that Faust survived. That's one tough bird! Very lucky too. So glad he's okay :)

Oh my! That's awful! I hate it when companies refuse to answer your questions like that. Though I don't own any birds, I'll tell anyone I know who does about this.

This reminds me of a few months ago:

Not too long ago, our dog was extremely ill. The vets had no idea what it was. It wasn't cancer, auto-immune, or any other illness they could think off. His organs were failing, though, and we were scared he was going to die.

Turns out his food was poisoned.

The company never released anything on it. When we called, they simply said 'it's being looked at, but our food is 100% safe and free from any harmful products! :)'

We took him off the food, and he recovered almost at once. :/

Oh, wow! Hopefully Faust is doing much better? I breathed a sigh of relief when I checked their website, and luckily non of my bird's toys are from them. Still, it really makes you wonder. >.<

My birds love to shew, so I happened upon some stuff called Shredders:

They really get a kick out of tearing it up and throwing the little shreds around, but don't seem to ever ingest any (not 100% sure, of course), but so far I've had no problems. :)

I wish I had a bird. ): We haven't had any since I was in first grade. We had parakeets and cockatiels then.

But wow. That's awful. It's the company's responsibility to make toys that are safe for the pet. It's sad that some fail to do so.

That said... I love bird toys. When I'm at the pet store I play with them. ):