Aviary advice

[Dan Clark]

I’m currently working on building a aviary to place along side my patio. I just built the panels to enclose a 3 ft by 6 foot space that will be 6 feet tall. This space will be placed on the ground, I will have button quail in there. So I need to know what type of bird to put in with them. I want a bird that won’t attack quail and that will reproduce on its own so I can repopulate my aviary. Be nice if they were pretty. I need to know what kind of housing to put in ....deferent birds need different houses. What kind of bird feeders would be best to refill from outside the cage? Any reason cage can’t just be placed on ground? How do you keep aviary clean? Any advice for a newbie? Here is the location it will go in at and the panels that I have made.

 

[Qwerty3159]

Finches, budgies, canaries are all suitable candidates. Can’t see your location on mobile or maybe it’s not in your profile. If you’re in a warm climate (enough to keep the buttons outside) then they should be fine as well. I’d recommend placing it on concrete blocks on the edges or burying the wire to keep out predators as well as mice. Stones or gravel is probably the best bottom substrate, easy enough to rinse off or scrape down. Parakeets and finches will use boxes as far as I know, I think canaries prefer open nests they build themselves. They have hopper style feeders and waterers that attach from the outside for wire cages, you can adapt most of them to work with the hardware cloth. I see some people use regular hanging wild bird feeders in their aviaries as well.

 

[Dan Clark]

I live in Illinois so I will probably have to transport birds inside when it gets cold. I have a large supply of limestone which I was going to place around the edge. To keep digging animals out (dog keeps most away) I was thinking to get some parakeets Since there pretty hardy and even tempered. Any advice to prevent birds from escaping don’t really want to build a second door. Maybe netting?

 

[muddy75]

I live in Illinois so I will probably have to transport birds inside when it gets cold. I have a large supply of limestone which I was going to place around the edge. To keep digging animals out (dog keeps most away) I was thinking to get some parakeets Since there pretty hardy and even tempered. Any advice to prevent birds from escaping don’t really want to build a second door. Maybe netting?

I made my door shorter so that I have to duck under to get in. This has helped prevent escapees. I haven’t found a nesting box that can withstand the wet weather so they are best placed indoors. Also once you have more than 1 female, they are brutally territorial over nesting boxes. They will kill babies even close to fledging in order to steal a nest. They will also raid the nests of other birds. If planning again, I would probably choose to keep finches with my buttons and no parakeets.

 

[Dan Clark]

Here is walls up now to set up pond and make perches and houses for finches to live in, I am planing to install a curtain rod outside the door and hang bird netting. That way I only need to have netting up when I am walking if into cage. Kind of like a hospital curtain.