Building my own breeding cage

[binglax09]

I'm thinking of putting together my own breeding cage this summer. As last summer I only had an a small cage that was not so good for breeding in.

Here are my thoughts
1: Long enough to put dividers in it if any birds need to be separated.
2: Thinking about growing grass or spider plants in the base in order to take care of sanitary issues. Have a deep enough base to have soil to grow what is needed.
3: Have a silo feeder and waterer on the rear of the cage in order to fill up instead of changing out feed/water every day!
4: nest box on the rear of the cage (top corner area) with a old digital camera used for inspection.
5: cage framed with wood and the bars might be metal coat hanger wire or any cage mesh I can find.

The cage will be facing the window (upstairs) with the back toward the room to keep disturbances down and make feeding/watering/inspections easy.


Just wanted to see if anyone had any ideas. I'm looking for simple and effective...

One last thing, I was going to use red LEDs for night lighting. Does red light have the same effect on birds as is does humans to the fact it keeps night vision intact?

[poohbear]

Forget the soil idea...It will go sour in a small cage.And I wouldn't mess with the lighting, it could affect the birds.

[ac12]

I use a webcam connected to a spare PC to monitor the nests.
The problem with all these cameras is the lens angel and the minimum focus distance. If the lens angle is not wide enough you have to put the camera farther from the nest, and you may not have the space to do that. On the other side, some webcams cannot focus close enough. 3 of mine are about 9 inches from the bottom of the nest to see the entire nest from straight above and 1 is about 4 inches from the nest bottom from the side angle.

I use 1/2 x 1/2 plastic coated wire mesh that I got from Home Depot.
Problem with coat hanger wire is trying straighten out the bends to get a long length. Also you will have to somehow connect the bars so there isn't a long length of unsupported wire.

For a divided cage w/o a wire mesh floor, you need to have dividers that go all the way down, and individual poop trays for each divided section. This lets you change out poop trays w/o the birds getting on the other side of the divider.

[binglax09]

I guess the plant idea is out. I did have a spider plant in the cage last summer and it worked out since the plant grew back quickly! I was thinking of having it as a detachable base so that I could change it out if it didnt work. I guess tossing together a cheap cage to have more space is the way to go.

As for the camera, I know a web cam would work and they can be had for next to nothing or free. BUT I wanted to get better photos out of a camera. The only issues is that the lens focusing every time would probably cause to much disturbance. I was going to set the focus correctly and then take the camera apart to disconnect the lens. That way every time I turned it on to take the picture it wouldnt make noise and the focus would be set correctly.

I need to figure out something for lighting though, as I can't leave any high draw lights on overnight since the house is solar. I need something like LEDs on a batteries.....

[ac12]

There are some decently high rez web cams. Just have to read the specs well. Some go up to 1024x768 (and higher), which is about 0.70 MegaPixl.

I use a couple strings of LED Christmas tree lights for my night lights. Don't know how much juice they take, but it is less than incandescent Christmas lights.