I’ve been assembling grab-and-go enrichment bins for exotic inpatients and want to compare notes. Last week a red-footed tortoise settled after a 10-minute foraging tray — soaked pellets scattered under leaf litter — and it made TPRs smoother. What species-specific tweaks are you using on busy AM rounds without blowing the schedule?
, mornings are chaos, so that ‘10-minute foraging tray’ is gold — on our red-footeds we do a 2–3 min leaf-litter scatter and rub a cherry tomato on a flat tile so they target and keep the head up for TPR, then swap the tile and move on. For small parrots, pre-loaded paper cup stacks (hole-punched, one safflower seed at the bottom) buy us 5 quiet minutes without blowing the schedule; just watch calories if they’re NPO. Do you pre-moisten pellets or stick to greens to keep cleanup fast?
For small psittacines, I do a 90-second paper-cup forage: pellets with a pinch of dried herb crumbles in a 3 oz cup, poke two holes, hang with a paper twist-tie — buys me a few quiet minutes for TPRs. , metal clips drive me nuts, so we pre-load a half-dozen cups in the bin and, if they’re amped, a fingertip smear of unsweetened applesauce on the rim kicks it off. Your “10-minute foraging tray” got me thinking — here’s a quick parrot foraging primer I like: Foraging – Lafeber® Pet Birds; anyone got a 2–3 minute equivalent for small lizards?