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making a cage????
Posted: Thu Sep 24, 2009 10:25 am
by adiekaty
hello everyone,
Had an idea to make a cage for my canary out of a piece of furniture. Dresser, large china cabinet? Any ideas? I would take alot of the wood off, replace with wire and have my grandpa make a tray of some kind for easy cleaning... Any thoughts? or pics? not finding anything on the computer. Thanks... I know it could be done... Just wanting some feedback and ideas....
BTW, Added a pair of Java's to the aviary.. I love them. Had 5 babies, those are sold. Have 5 Goulds bought, just waiting for them to be weaned... Excited about that...
And accquired a pair of peach face lovebirds about 2 months ago. They have 6 eggs, hatch day should be Saturday or Sunday!!! Those will be hard to get rid of... lol May keep them....
Hope everyone is well...
Thanks,
Adrienne
Re: making a cage????
Posted: Thu Sep 24, 2009 10:51 am
by GOULDYGIRL
This used to be a china cabinet my husband took the glass doors off, made an extension to make it deeper and we used hardware cloth for the front and doors.
Just to give you an idea on what can be done.
Good luck,
Renee

Re: making a cage????
Posted: Thu Sep 24, 2009 12:26 pm
by CandoAviary
I just can't get over how unique and attractive that cage is

Re: making a cage????
Posted: Thu Sep 24, 2009 3:45 pm
by adiekaty
wow... that looks great... Exactly what I had in mind... So the only wire is on the front? The sides are still the wood frame? And did u just paint the inside? easy to keep clean Or are you scrubbing the walls all day? LOL>
I want something different and cool for the canary. Although I may pit the Goulds in it instead... Can i put the canary with them? I have a great china cabinet that i use, did a black distressed crackle finish on it... Maybe the wedding china gets packed up and the more important stuff goes in....lol...
hmmmm.... What to do?
Thanks agin for the picture...
Re: making a cage????
Posted: Thu Sep 24, 2009 4:24 pm
by GOULDYGIRL
Yes, the back is the old cabinet and the sides are wood. Just the front has the wire and the doors. My husband painted it but I don't like the color. It was a dark wood, but shiny and also he added on to make it wider so we decided just to paint the whole thing. I haven't had to clean the walls at all yet but I'm sure it won't be too difficult. We built 6 pull out draws the floor of each cage is the wire as well, but I use newspaper and papertowels over them. That gets cleaned weekly and whatever falls through goes in the trays.
This cage is a double. Right now I have two male Gouldians and my Gloster Canary on top, and my breeding pair on the bottom. My canary and gouldians get along very well.
Renee
Re: making a cage????
Posted: Thu Sep 24, 2009 5:09 pm
by adiekaty
renee,
Thanks for the info... I looked again at my cabinet. The doors are tall and narrow, if i just screen that in, it will be hard to get food in and out and clesn. May need to re think some. I love yours though...
Headed to antique-flea market next week... May look for something there... Experiment that way. So your husband redid the front so u could have acess doors? Is there a pull out tray or u just scoop everything up?
Sorry for the thousands of questions...
Thanks again...
Adrienne
glad to hear I can mix the Goulds and the male canary...
Re: making a cage????
Posted: Thu Sep 24, 2009 5:22 pm
by GOULDYGIRL
No problem Adrienne! I looked at a lot of pictures online, that's how I got my ideas about the furniture flights. There is a lot of different ideas out there and I just kept saving the ones I liked and showing them to the hubby. We worked with what we had. Since my hubby is a contractor he had all the material except for the wire, so really didn't cost anything to do.
When he took the glass doors off, there was only about 10 inches of frame on both sides. He added wood to that frame so now the flight is 2ft deep. Besides the back and very little sides that were left, he pretty much rebuilt it. I love it because on the bottom has cabinets for all my supplies.
He made six draws, if you see in the picture there is 3 gold nobs on top and 3 on the bottom, those are draws that you pull out and can dump. The cage floor is wire and has wood supports underthat, then the draws. It's kind of hard to explain. It was the last minute I had decided to make it a double flight, so made it a lot more work

I got the idea from Janine, maybe she can post pics of her handmade flights. Her hubby did it from scratch though.
Renee
Re: making a cage????
Posted: Thu Sep 24, 2009 5:31 pm
by GOULDYGIRL
This is my favorite. This is Martha Stewart's for her red factor canaries. How cool and beautiful is this?
http://www.marthastewart.com/article/ca ... lated_test
Re: making a cage????
Posted: Thu Sep 24, 2009 5:39 pm
by lovemyfinch
Here is a link to cage that my hubby built me to house my fids.
Enjoy
http://www.finchforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=6095
Re: making a cage????
Posted: Fri Sep 25, 2009 11:41 am
by adiekaty
Thanks again renee for the info... You mentioned you found lots of pics online... How did u search it>? Cause I cant find a darn thing.... Except for the cages by design stuff... I wanted things ppl had done themselves...
thanks....
Re: making a cage????
Posted: Mon Sep 28, 2009 4:15 pm
by Meagan83
Ohhhh....That is sooo pretty

Re: making a cage????
Posted: Tue Sep 29, 2009 5:11 pm
by FeatherHarp
That is quite the fancy cage.....I wonder how easy it is to clean?
But I don't think Martha would know she probably hires somebody to do that.

Re: making a cage????
Posted: Wed Oct 21, 2009 2:43 pm
by franny
adiekaty wrote:Thanks again renee for the info... You mentioned you found lots of pics online... How did u search it>? Cause I cant find a darn thing.... Except for the cages by design stuff... I wanted things ppl had done themselves...
thanks....
Here's a link to the cage I built. Nothing like as gorgeous as what Janine's hubby made! But it was all built with just hand tools and pretty much only 1 X 1 trim and a bit of 1/4 " plywood for the bottom and trim. So was not too expensive. The wire is 3/8" galvanized wire (so I didn't need to worry about any fledgelings escaping.
http://www.finchforum.com/viewtopic.php ... ow+I+built
This was pretty easy to build, and it's light weight enough to roll around. It's only 36" long, and if I had it to do over I'd have made it 48" long and put a divider in it somehow. But it's actually worked out very well. Since this post I've also cut some plexi glass for bottom half of the sides and back, which are held in place with the little metal things you can buy to hold paintings/photos in a frame. Easy to take them off and wash if they get soiled, and they really help stop seed from scattering. I'll take a picture of the plexi glass when I get home and post it so you can see how I attached it.