FINCHforum

Hello all! Does anyone have any sources for mesh to buy for indoor flights? Ibam converting an armiore and would prefer to use the mesh over the chicken-wire type.
Any help appreciated.

Thank you,
Cara

You can buy it online or from Home Depot or from Lowe's.

Thank you - looked at HD and saw something that might work. Depends on how big the openings are in real life. Is quarter of an inch the size to go by - or 1/2 inch?

Half inch mesh should work fine. That's what I used when I built our Gouldian flight cage out of an armoire! I scrubbed the mesh with vinegar and then painted it black. So far it's worked really well. Are you installing any backing? I used a corrugated acrylic backing, which has worked really well for ease of cleaning.

I have 1/2 by 1/2 inch square wire mesh for the outside flight its stronger but cost twice the price.

The indoor flight i have is 1/2 kinda oval shaped and ive never had any problems with it.

I think it would depend on which species you were planning to house in the flight. Smaller birds(such as strawberry finches or gold breasted waxbills) can squeeze through 1/2'' bars when they are motivated (particularly when they are tiny juveniles), so my waxbills are now housed in an enclosure with 1/4'' spacing for their mesh. If you have birds around the size of gouldians you should be alright with 1/2''.

Decimus - do you have a picture of your flight? I am in the planning stages right now and want to make sure I make it the best that I can.
I was planning on covering the back wall with something - so will look into that. I will be housing gouldians, and this is like a "honeycomb" shape, so just need to make sure it isn't bigger than 1/2 inch anyway.
Thank you for the replies!

Decimus, where did you find the corrugated backing? The only stuff I have found at Home Depot or Lowes was too small for what I was wanting.

I do have a photo, but I've been having trouble getting it to show up in the post. I'll try again but the photo can be found on flikr here: https://flic.kr/p/nLK9cQ

I used white corrugated plastic cardboard for the back - I was able to buy a single sheet at Lowes but I can't find the listing on their website. This seems to be the closest - the 10pk listing at Home Depot. http://www.homedepot.com/p/Unbranded-48 ... /202489118

But as I said, I just used one sheet, cut to fit.

Decimus - thank you for the photos! I believe mine will be similar with the front just the mesh and the doors on the side. Did you cut a hole in the top for the light?

No, although I'd contemplated that originally. However, there had been a light installed in it originally, which I removed (it was quite aged), so there was a small hole in the top. I used that to run wiring through, and installed a bare light socket attached to an electrical box which is then attacked directly to the roof. The small side doors at the extreme top let me reach in and change the bulb if need be, but I'm using a full-spectrum CFL bulb. It's bare but we haven't had any problems yet as a result. There's a heated perch that isn't visible on the extreme upper left, but mostly the birds stay in the mid-range. The plastic plants throw shadows so the birds can get as close to or far from the "sun" as they want.

If need be, I still have some mesh I can use to keep the birds from the light but it hasn't seemed necessary. So far it's worked pretty well. I've had to adjust the perches a bit to find an arrangement that worked well, and we had to remove the fountain because the birds really didn't like flying to the bottom and it was getting bird droppings bombed on it regularly. The biggest problem, ironically, was the platform feeder. The birds were afraid of it and refused to land to get the food from it. Eventually I had to pull one of their old feed bowls, with a "landing platform", so they'd feel it was familiar enough to land on. But after a month or so we switched from the old plastic feeders to small metal bowls that fit better.

For a large, walk in flight I used this:
http://www.amazon.com/Industrial-Nettin ... abbit+mesh
It's great for visibility - the disadvantage is that it doesn't hold cups, cuttlebone holders, seed hoppers etc like wire mesh does.