Building your own bird cage

Question
You mentioned in several answers that you make your own cages and that you buy the supplies at local hardware stores.  I would like to build a custom cage in my home, but I am uncertain what materials would work best for the sides of the cage and what would be the safest material to use for the birds.  I am also unsure of where to find the proper materials.  My wife and I are still deciding on either parakeets or lovebirds.  What do you use and suggest?

Thanks!

Answer
Hi, Joseph.  Thanks for posting.

You can build cages in a couple of different ways.  How you build a cage depends on whether you want it free-standing with legs, whether you want to put it on a stand of some sort (no legs), or whether you want to hang your cage (from ceiling, also no legs).  Also depends on how asthetically pleasing you want the cage to be.  You can make a wooden frame and then affix wire to the sides, top, bottom by using a staple gun.  You can build a cage without wood by just bending wire and then cutting an opening for the door and using some of the wire to make a door, affixing the door with cage clips or electrical ties, etc.

I like building my own cages because I can make them exactly the way I want them, i.e., I can make the size and shape I want, I can put as many doors on as I want (and whatever size), I can make an opening for a nestbox, etc.  Building is also (usually) less expensive than buying a cage.  

Use untreated wood and don't paint the wood, unless you can find nontoxic paint (nontoxic to birds).  For just framing, you can use 1x1's, 1x2's or whatever size wood you want.  Legs would be a larger size wood.  I use 1/2 x1" or 1x1" or 1x2" wire for keets/lovebirds/some conures.  Depending on what hardware store you visit, the wire you are looking for might be found in the area where they sell chain link fencing or gates for chain link fencing or chicken wire.  If you can't find it, ask a store employee.  Some stores will even order it for you.  You want a size wire where whatever type bird you choose can't get it's head stuck in the wire should a bird try to put it's head through it, but you want the wire spacing to be wide enough so you can attach perches, feed dishes, etc., to it.  Whatever wire you choose, just clean/disinfect it very well before placing birds in it.  

If using wood to make a frame, you can either wrap the wire all the way around the frame (and affix), then make top and bottom, OR make individual pieces for all 4 sides and the top and bottom (and affix).  To make a door, just cut an opening (or 2) wherever you want the door(s) to be.  Then cut a piece of wire a bit larger than the opening and affix one side to the cage.  You can create any type closure for the door that you want.  

If you're just using wire to make a cage, there's a very easy way to create a cage.  All you have to do is cut 2 pieces of wire and put together.  Each piece of wire would be the size of 2 sides and the top/bottom.  In other words, if you are making a cage with sides 2 feet wide and the top and bottom 2 feet wide, each piece of wire you should cut would be 6 foot.  In the end, you would have 2 pieces of wire 6 foot long.  Bend the wire to make 2 sides and the top/bottom, then put together and attach with electrical ties or cage clips or whatever you want to use.  This is hard to explain in writing, so first try working with a piece of paper to understand what I'm trying to explain!  Then all you'd need to do is make an opening for a door and a door.  You can make a wire cage in about an hour.  I hang all my bird cages from the ceiling, but I have rooms full of birds and hanging them makes it easier to clean under the cages without having to move any cages when I clean.  You can be creative and make an aviary-type setup in a corner of a room (ceiling to floor).  

The best cage is one in which there are 2 "bottoms"...the top one allows the bird's droppings to fall through to a second one (keeps a bird from coming into contact with it's droppings and dropped food).  You can make a pull-out bottom for the second one, which makes clean up a breeze.  This type setup is ideal for parrots.

There are many different ways to make cages, depending on what you want.  You might want to look at cage designs on the internet or in books to get some ideas.  

Between keets and lovebirds, my choice would be keets.  Not that I don't like lovebirds, but when you get more than 1 lovebird in a home, they tend to loose tameness.  Depends on what you want to do with the birds., i.e., have tame, pet birds or just look at them and listen to them.  If you want to have tame, pet birds, you should only keep 1 bird.  This is because birds prefer other birds to humans.  Once you add a second or more birds, they tend to bond to each other and not to their humans.  If you don't want to breed any parrots, DO NOT include nests or anything that might be a place where the bird(s) could lay eggs or they will eventually.

Visit my website for general info on parrots:  http://www.angelfire.com/falcon/birdinfo/index.html

Come back if you have any questions.  Thanks.

Chrys