FINCHforum

Always love visiting my local pet superstore as they have a massive array of aviaries on display with hundreds of different species of birds for sale, including hand tamed budgies, cockatiels and various other parrots and parakeets.

Here is a pic of the finch aviary. It's quite chaotic in there, and when I come home to my aviary with only two zebra finches and their baby it just seems so much more peaceful and spacious!!

Wow ! That must be total chaos & hysteria when they try to catch a bird for a buyer

I see parakeets (budgies) in the avairy too.
That's not a good idea.

Personally, I think pet shops should have all sale birds in cages, if for no other reason than to reduce the stress when catching birds for a customer. It also makes it easier for a customer to select a specific bird. It is a nice idea to have a display aviary, but it would be very effective if it was an attractive decorated aviary with just a few display birds, showing customers what they could replicate in their own homes.

That aviary is much more space than what most birds are kept within at petstores. I agree the stress of catching them would be a challenge. At least, the store shows people the birds need room to fly.

I agree with everyone...but Deb makes a key point! Yes that aviary is FULL and the hookbills pose a potential problem...but this aviary is 1000x better than the 10"x8"x12" cages the finches live in at my local Petland. I am so sad every time I walk into a pet store and see lovely birds crammed into travel sized cages. At least these guys have some room

Yeah it is crowded in there but it is quite a large aviary. The picture only shows a quarter of the total size of the aviary.

I was surprised to see budgies in there though, but they all seemed to coexist OK in the time I watched them.

As for catching birds, the staff member would go inside the aviary and use a net to catch the bird you point out. But picking one particular bird is pretty tricky and you'll most likely end up getting another one that looked similar. With the net moving around it does become very chaotic!! And obviously very easy to lose the one you are trying to point out.

magna_elite
My favorite pet shop has their sale birds in glass front enclosures that are about 30/20/20 give or take. Then they have a huge area aviary where they keep birds that are not for sale at the time. It is mixed finches with some hookbills (no lovebirds or budgies in there) They have trees with nests that have cameras so that you can see nest activity on tv screens. Then on the floor, they have several tortoises that have special heat lighting. Sometimes you see a bird sitting on top of a tortoise which is quite entertaining.

My two cents after having been a manager in a pet store for four years is this: pet stores are not permanent homes for any of the animals in it. Unless of course they are actually a display or "store" animal. You have to compromise between being able to display the animal and all the other ones reasonably, making sure they are comfortable and well-taken care of and that the customer who is spending money (and the reason pet stores exist at all) can see all the animals and products thus maximizing your chance of a sale.

I would never send birds home in some of the atrociously small cages I've seen in pet stores for sale. But I'm fine with them being in small cages while at the store. Our canaries and finches were in long narrow cages that allowed you to easily catch them. There's nothing like chasing a bird around for five minutes and then turning it loose into a store full of people and dangers like plate glass windows, open fish tanks, and other animals.

Cages are also much easier to keep clean. Birds have the words messy attached to them. They certainly don't need any help proving it. If that was my store or I worked there I would turn that into a well landscaped walk-in aviary with several species so customers could see something beautiful they might want installed in their own home.

I can't imagine that they honestly sell that many birds that they need to house that many in the store at once. And the chaos that ensues when an employee steps in there with a net must be unimaginable. I would straight up refuse to catch birds out of there. And some people are just terrible with nets. It's a net, not a tennis racket. The bird should fly into it, you shouldn't be swatting at it.

Very neat idea, just poorly executed.