FINCHforum

hi all !!!!
the back wall of my aviary is 5ft long i was going to put a peice of lattice right along the back wall and hang the nests on all along at diffrent hieghts. or should i do it on the sides of the aviary whats the best suggestion. if i go the sides i dont have much room because of a side window i put in. and the back wall means they will be facing the front, ill have 8 nest in total just thinking of their privacy ill have plastic plants running through the lattice, what should i do with the nests.

firetailone wrote:hi all !!!!
the back wall of my aviary is 5ft long i was going to put a peice of lattice right along the back wall and hang the nests on all along at diffrent hieghts. or should i do it on the sides of the aviary whats the best suggestion. if i go the sides i dont have much room because of a side window i put in. and the back wall means they will be facing the front, ill have 8 nest in total just thinking of their privacy ill have plastic plants running through the lattice, what should i do with the nests.

I can't picture this in my mind without a picture, but..... I would make sure that if you enter the aviary that they are not facing you. I have had alot of trouble with my owls and when I turned the nest around and so they were not facing the doorway, they stayed on their eggs. Finally!!

I would do the nests along the back wall, and then put a few on the side--let the birds have lots of choices. Don't forget to stagger them at different heights, too.

Hi Sally~
I have been toying with the idea of putting some nest boxes on the outside of the avairy so I could check a box when it's close to fledgling time for banding puposes. You need to be comfortable with the chance someone or something disturbing them at times when your not there - night time including.

Oh, Sam, don't do it, if they are going to be on an outside wall. First, I once opened a nestbox to check on the babies, and a baby flew right out past me. It was in my birdroom, but still took me over an hour to find it. If it had been outside, I probably would have lost it. You think you can catch a little one, but they are surprisingly quick, and since so many of them don't have much color at first, they are hard to see.

Second, if you have critters around your place (everyone has critters of some type), a nestbox on the outside would be easy pickings for a racoon, opposum, or snake. I had a snake get into my shed where I used to keep the birds, it crawled into a cage, ate 3 juvie Stars, then I caught it because it was too fat to crawl back thru the bars (it had curled up in the middle of a plastic plant for a nap).

If you have a secure entry vestibule into your aviary, then you could maybe mount a couple of nestboxes on the outside of the aviary but within the vestibule. Otherwise, I would try to hang the nestboxes inside the aviary but not so high, so I could reach them to check on them.

okay, i have lots of nest in my cage and just thought about the spacing, basically i have all my nest at the top spread out 6 inches from each other and about 6 inches down from them i have another row of nests bout 8 inches from each other does that sound good for them, they seem to be okay with it. i have 4 nests next to each other with hatchlings and there has been no fighting.

That hits home real quick to think of a race to catch an escapee before a critter. No outside boxes, except maybe in my safe room. Thanks

the lattice will be screwed to the wall with the silk plant strips going through the holes.

If you don't mind telling, what material are putting in the nest to get them started or are you just going to spread timothy hay on the groud for your birds to do the work?

i dont know what timothy hay is ,,i live in oz. i will stuff the nests half full with coco fibre, sisal,grass, i work with the fibre so i will never run short there. lucky me!,,,,,,,,,,,has anyone got the idea what im talking about with the lattice

I saw pics somewhere with lattice used on the back wall, and it looked very nice. Then with weaving the silk plants thru the lattice, should make a good place to hang nests.