Would this cage work?

[tozie12]

ashley... i keep looking at your pics of your living/diningroom... and uh... where's your TV? the second thought that keeps going thru my mind is WOW! even AS SOON as i finish cleaning, there isnt a room in the house that ever looks that good! ... including rooms that never have birds in 'em... let alone a room with TWO birds in it.

 

[penny'smom]

Yes, the caique cage is the playtop. It's around 23x32" and 34" tall inside. Bar spacing is 5/8. I don't recall the brand but I will look it up. We've had it 4 years, and there are some minor rust spots but it's in good shape. She uses ALL the space, and the top. I don't understand why there aren't XL cages with smaller spacing for conure size birds! From what I've read on this forum, there are certainly many people who would buy them. Penelope is a very good climber, and I think that an extra 1/8 wouldn't be a problem for her. She can climb down to the floor in her current cage (I've seen her go over the seedcatcher and down the legs and back to retrieve a dropped piece of fruit) so having one lower isn't a concern. I just want her to have more space and access to more toys, perches, etc because I don't foresee having a bigger house with a bird room anytime soon. Zoe has the dometop, and I really think she'd like to have a flat top. The corner cages don't fit out the door, so it would involve more hand-cleaning, and we'd need some smaller cages to take them outside for sun - all worth it for extra space, imo.

 

[penny'smom]

ashley... i keep looking at your pics of your living/diningroom... and uh... where's your TV? the second thought that keeps going thru my mind is WOW! even AS SOON as i finish cleaning, there isnt a room in the house that ever looks that good! ... including rooms that never have birds in 'em... let alone a room with TWO birds in it.

haha- thanks. The wood floors make it pretty easy to keep clean. If you look at the wall with the framed photos you'll see a projector. We have a 4x8 foot screen (a plain white board) on the opposite wall - so we have a movie-style setup, and the surround sound my husband installed. Actually much cheaper than a regular TV. Everything in that back part is leaving, so we will have space for Zoe's new cage, and we'll probably get a small table and 2 chairs (maybe bar-height). It's a small house, but the space is well-used. I just pretend it's a million-dollar NYC loft, LOL.

 

[penny'smom]

Luckily, as an artist/designer I get my house decorated for the cost of materials. We got this place as a fixer upper (first home) needing lots of cosmetic work and replaced literally EVERY surface, from the roof, to floors (once covered in dirty old carpet), to layers of wallpaper removed, to countertops. This room had a 1/2 wall where the dometop cage is, and ugly built-ins across the back window. Luckily I grew up in a do-it-yourself household, as in my dad got me power tools for my birthday. I've worked jobs doing drywall and tile, and floor refinishing, etc. so we did it all ourselves. My husband is good at minor plumbing and electrical. Had we known we were going to have birds, we would have done some things differently though - which is why we're tinkering with this room now.

 

[tozie12]

wow!! impressive! i re-tiled my dining room floor this past summer. it was my first experience tiling. i'm not exactly old but i'm not young anymore either... and unfortunately my knees and my neck are about 15 years older than the rest of me, i could barely move for three days! ya'll have aaaallll my admiration!
i have wood flooring in my livingroom, where 3 of my 5 birds are, and i LOVE it! i plan to put wood flooring into my spare room in the next year or two... did i mention i rent and my landlady LOVES me? she puts up with me and my zoo cause i not only repair any damage they do (my Great Dane pup ATE my dining room linoleum!! ) but i also upgrade the house. <grin>

 

[DQTimnehs]

What about flight cages for the bigger size and smaller bar spacing? Quack came with a huge flight cage - 38" x 38" x 5' high. The only thing was it had 8 small doors and no big door. But you could have 1 side custom made or modified with a big door. I considered doing that (having it modified).

 

[tozie12]

marley's first cage here was a flight cage. it was awful for a few reasons:
#1 the doors were too small and i had to do contortionist moves to clean all the gooeyness off the cage.
#2 no food doors. even the cage i have now only has two food doors, in my opinion, not enough. my mac has 6 bowls just for himself! i would like to have at least four food doors for marley's cage.
#3 the bars were all vertical. i think having the alternate vertical and horizontal bars are better for the climbers.
#4 is was still no wider than the one he has now so really wasnt any better. (his current one is 36 x 24)

now what was better? there was one thing better bout it: it was 2 1/2 feet off the floor so he used the bottom more.

<sigh> what can i say? i'm picky when it comes to cages. <grin> i want what i want.

 

[penny'smom]

I'm not finding any flight cages that will work so far. To buy something new I'd have to have something significantly better, and the only cage that has a *lot* more room is the 3/4" spaced corner cage online.

Beth - I bet your landlady DOES love you!

 

[roxynoodle]

Luckily, as an artist/designer I get my house decorated for the cost of materials. We got this place as a fixer upper (first home) needing lots of cosmetic work and replaced literally EVERY surface, from the roof, to floors (once covered in dirty old carpet), to layers of wallpaper removed, to countertops. This room had a 1/2 wall where the dometop cage is, and ugly built-ins across the back window. Luckily I grew up in a do-it-yourself household, as in my dad got me power tools for my birthday. I've worked jobs doing drywall and tile, and floor refinishing, etc. so we did it all ourselves. My husband is good at minor plumbing and electrical. Had we known we were going to have birds, we would have done some things differently though - which is why we're tinkering with this room now.

I've done the same with my house. I saw it as a blank slate for my own personalization, but the character of an old house. You sure can't buy one these days made with giant oak beams and studs, or the hand carved woodwork. I'm not finished yet. The outside is done, along with the kitchen, front room and bathroom. Right now I'm doing the living room and then will move on to the bedrooms. I work slow due to having expensive tastes but not the salary to go with it But, I'd rather save for the materials I want than to do things quicker but be dissatisfied.

Yes, I didn't want a flight cage either due to difficulty with having all those little doors, and also not having outside food/water cups. If I'm in the hospital, someone needs to feed my birds and I don't want territorial Rowdy biting them. They might not come back figuring they don't care if the "mean bird" starves or not

Caiques are pretty skilled climbers, that's true. I've watched videos of them scrambling up skinny strings for window blinds without a problem.

 

[roxynoodle]

Cage buying is frustrating. In my dream world Roxy would be able to point me to the cage she just described. We all want bigger cages for our smaller birds and no one makes them. You would think someone somewhere who builds cages would be smart enough to read forums and see what their customers want......nah that would be silly.

At any rate love your house!! Really well decorated!

Maybe I should turn it into a business! Roxy's custom cages for small parrots in the real world! I do need something to do. I'm too sick to work anymore at any normal job with a set schedule. But, if I made cages, no one would really care if I was doing it at 3am, or whenever I wasn't sick in the bathroom, lol!

 

[penny'smom]

Just took the plunge and ordered the big corner cage with 3/4 spacing for Penelope. She is going to have a ball in there - and she will love that half round fold-down hatch. I've been searching all over for a bigger cage for her, and it seems like other caique people have too, without any luck. We picked up the other cage for Zoe today - it has a few rough spots that need to be covered with vetwrap. We talked it over for hours, and came to the conclusion that we can make it work. We really want them to have more space, and with the rearrangement we can finally do that.

Now I need to find some big perches - any suggestions? I will definitely be looking at the AA vendors first. I also want to get some platforms. We have spare toys to start filling them up already, but will probably need a few more things once we get the basics done. I am feeling a little overwhelmed getting these jumbo houses set up though! Also hoping that I can sell more paintings to make me feel better about spending a lot at once, LOL.

 

[heirofslytherin123]

Danielle with the little perch company has great perches and she does custom work too

 

[roxynoodle]

Danielle with the little perch company has great perches and she does custom work too

She does have really nice perches and a great website. But, she doesn't have anything that can go all the way across a large cage. I did check with her first for my new cage as I want to support our vendors and members. Normally I also make my own but my oven can't fit a 40" perch. I bought mine from an ebay seller. They haven't arrived yet so I can't tell you yet what I think. They are ribbonwood. The seller's name is parrotsahoy. However the ones I bought are 1.5" diameter, which is large for a Caique But, maybe you can contact her and ask for long perches that are 3/4" or whatever you would like.

Also some here just mentioned Exotic Wood Dreams can make you custom perches.

 

[FLmom]

WOW thats not a cage it's an indoor aviary that's so nice!!!! I know Kai would also use every inch of that cage what fun it would be to decorate