I was in Pet Smart buying pet food and bedding today, and I noticed that they had a lot of new guinea pig and rabbit toys made out of corn husks. Since we enjoy a lot of fresh corn this time of year, it got me thinking that I should save some of the husks and make my own at no extra cost.

Going with this idea, I tried two different methods of toy making with the corn I purchased at Whole Foods today:

Method 1: If you shuck the corn by pulling the leaves down while keeping them attached to the stem, and then snap the cob away from the stem, then you can simply remove the silk, fold the leaves back up (so it looks like it did before you started, except with the cob removed), and let it dry just like that. This method produces one large toy per ear (or one medium to large toy using this method, plus one toy using the method below, if a few leaves break off ).

Method 2: Take a small handful of fresh leaves and tie them together. I considered bundling them with string, however I was concerned about it being toxic, or them choking on it, so I opted to use one of the leaves, instead. It worked pretty well, and now the whole thing is edible! This method produces two or three smaller toys.

Out of my four fairly average sized ears of corn, I used a combination of the two methods above to produce eight toys. At four ears for a $1, that's a lot of savings over the pet store's $5+ per toy, and it only took me a few minutes to do! If you're feeling crafty, you could always take the leaves and braid or weave them together into more complicated shapes, but for me, I figured my guinea pigs wouldn't really notice the difference!

Here is a photo of one of my guinea pigs enjoying a treat which was made using Method 2, above: