Page 607 - Hand rearing birds second

608 Hand-Rearing Birds

A.2­ Construction
Wooden frames have been used, and the author has never experienced issues with the birds chew-
ing them. However, the wood rotted close to the ground, the door frames warped becoming hard to
shut, and bolts became misaligned in damp weather. Frames are now almost exclusively steel;
which doesn’t warp, shrink, or settle, but is more expensive and more labor intensive to work with.
Do not paint anything as parrots will likely pick at it and ingest paint flecks.
The load‐bearing of the enclosure is important: the higher the structure and longer the span, the
stronger the gauge of tubing and the more corner braces are necessary. Use square tubing through-
out as it makes it easier to build doors that fit snugly. Round fence‐pipe with commercially pro-
duced connectors was not as durable, rusting badly at joints and welds; nor were all necessary
connectors available. For the majority of the smaller enclosure sizes, 1¼ in. (3.1 cm) galvanized
steel square tubing is adequate. Use 1½ in. (3.8 cm) tubing to create the sleeve connectors: these
are much stronger than welding a joint. For flight enclosures, use 2 in. (5 cm) square tubing
throughout with possible 2 × 4 box steel for the rafters if the enclosure is more than 30 ft. (9.1 m)
wide (Figure 39.8).
If possible, every enclosure should have double‐layered wire walls throughout to prevent preda-
tor attack and toe‐chewing through the wire by previously released parrots or those in adjacent
caging. Do not use chicken wire, it is too flexible and the holes are too wide to exclude predators.
Use of ½ in. (1.3 cm) hardware cloth wire is preferred, doubled if possible. With anything larger,
small snakes and rodents can get through while opossums and raccoon will reach their paws in.
There have been cases where captive birds have literally been pulled apart by predators reaching
into caging with wide mesh walls. This sort of attack doesn’t happen in the large flight aviaries
when there’s plenty of foliage inside for parrots to climb and all of the birds are well‐flighted.

Figure 39.8 Box steel 2 ×4 primary supports in a very large aviary, with a variety of ropes and perches.