So I'm pretty much finished building my cage and I think my final step is to paint it. I used galvanized hardware cloth to build it. Some sources say this is bad for birds because if they ingest the pieces of zinc they could get heavy metal poisoning. At first, I was going to leave the cage as is because other sources say that the danger of a finch ingesting the zinc is low, but I've decided now to neutralize the risk as best I can. I'm going to do this by wire brushing the cage down to get off the bigger chunks, going over it all with a vinegar/water solution, letting it sun dry (maybe repeating steps 2 and 3), then painting it with bird-safe paint. I'll do steps 1-3 tomorrow probably, but I still need to buy the paint. I'm going to use black because people say that makes the birds stand out. I was going to buy ECOS Pet Dwellings paint because they claim that it's almost ideal for painting bird cages, but it's $30 a quart!
I could have just gone ahead and bought the expensive stainless steal hardware cloth and I wouldn't even have to paint. I didn't reeeally budget this whole project out before I started and now the numbers are starting to feel like they're adding up. tldr: Does anyone know any good paint that's safe for painting bird cages?
