Heater for Bird Room

[nixity]

Yes, Florida in the summer... well I don't even deal with the humidity. Had some trouble with the scarlet grasskeets but so far no problems with the gouldians. I keep the goulds in the indoor areas though and right now they are in a house (crazy bird house) with dry heat.
I have been talking with several grasskeet breeders and many have had problems with the high humidity and their birds. I will not keep this species if I continue to have health problems.

What kinds of health problems? :\
That's no good.. I remember you saying you didn't have much luck breeding them this past year, right?
They are so beautiful, it would be a shame if you had to give them up!

[CandoAviary]

Lost 1 young male and 3 older from my original offsprings
Birds become fluffed. Tend to just overnight go down...Then dead.
Not all at the same time. I have wormed, even did rounds with the trim.../sulfa drugs. Droppings normal, Appetites great,
Have been told by one of the best breeders out of NC that it most probably is the humidity. He said if you can catch them and get them moved indoors (less humid) you may be able to save them. Needless to say I have moved them all indoors..I took the extra room of the crazy bird house and set it up for them. So far so good.
I just like to give them more room that the outdoor aviary offers as opposed to the flight cages........ We will see.

[MLaRue]

No - I don't think so - my house was kept at 70 degrees all summer and the humidity would rise above 50 the whole time - so maybe it helps keep it lower then if I didn't use the a/c but it wasn't low enough to me. I'm keeping my room at 35 to 40 (humidity) and babies are hatching just fine.

Laraine keeps her birds at 35 (humidity) and says all her eggs hatch...

[CandoAviary]

You know I don't have a gauge to test the humidity in the gouldian breeding room but the eggs are hatching with no problems. 68 chicks hatched and lived. 12 hatched and tossed, handfeds that did not live and very few unfertilized/ unhatched eggs and a few DIS eggs due mostly to parent abandoning nest and I let nature take it's course.
All since June. So far the humidity hasn't been much of a factor for the hatching of eggs for me.
Now the keets... sevearl nest of eggs.... 0 hatchlings and most pairs I didn't even ste up to breed because they were not in tip top shape.
They were outdoors though.

[Finch Fry]

Tiffany, get a dehumidifier over a heater. You will be surprised how much the house heating will heat up the basement if you remove the excess water thats preventing the air to heat up down there. Is your basement below ground or ground level? Its always an energy intensive battle to heat a below ground room as temps below 4 ft in ground are a constant 55 F year, round, always, no matter where you are.

[nixity]

Tiffany, get a dehumidifier over a heater. You will be surprised how much the house heating will heat up the basement if you remove the excess water thats preventing the air to heat up down there. Is your basement below ground or ground level? Its always an energy intensive battle to heat a below ground room as temps below 4 ft in ground are a constant 55 F year, round, always, no matter where you are.

It's not fully below ground because both portions (unfinished and finished) have windows opening up at ground level.
I do feel like the HVAC should be enough to keep it around 68 which I think is fine, and which is about what my birds were kept at last winter too.. my main concern is the high humidity which I personally feel Goulds do not thrive in.

[ac12]

Donna
An AC unit is a dehumidifier also.
The hot/warm air is blown over the COLD cooling/condensing coils, the heat from the air is drawn into the cooling coils to cool the air. At the same time, the moisture in the air hitting the cold cooling coils is like room air and a glass of ice water where the moisture in the air will condense on the outside of the glass of ice water, the moisture in the air hitting the cooling coils will condense on the cooling coils and drip out. That is how an AC dehumidifies the air.

Not sure about the central AC units, but when you look at a window mounted AC unit, you many times will see it dripping water. That is the moisture removed from the air by going thru the AC cooling. That is also why you see a puddle of water under the front right part of the car on a hot muggy day, the car AC is removing the moisture from the air, and it is dripping out of the AC drain.