Post by HawkingRage on Nov 22, 2006 23:10:12 GMT -5
it might be cool to leave a couple shelves and put astroturf on them. your bird might like that spot for eating. deffinatly coroplast the walls, it makes so much easier for cleaning. you know what might be fun is to get some real thick rope like 2 inches thick and make some perches that are not level , or maybe a swing perch. good god id have a huge mew and make it for one bird with lots of room to move around. maybe some of those rubber mats that enterlock with each other for the floor. maybe in a corner mount a wood platform with a hole in it to put the water pan in, with no perches next to it of coarse.
can you tell i envy you? ill make sure that when i buy my house it has a big set up like you got. purely awesome!
Looks like you have an EXCELLENT building to work with. Personally i kinda like the lights, if you ever get a HH they will come in handy.
What do you mean about the HH? Will they be able to change the bulbs if they burn...?
HH do not tolerate extreme cold very well and your locatoin says your in CND. If so, then you could put in heat lights in those fixtures over a perch or two to keep the bird warm.
Falcon Boy Apprentice Falconry Administrator
Ethics make the individual, not the other way around.
Don't know where I'll find them but I'll certainly search hard for it! I planned a classical long perch in front of teh other set of windows, and for the rest well... Don't know! lol Might want to place a removable high perch on the wall or another rope perch in the middle of the place... Don't know yet what kind of setup I'll install in there. It's almost too big! lol
With shelves perch I'm afraid of tail damage, am I wrong?
And Falcon Boy, HH would definitely have had some kind of heating device in them with there, be it light bulbs, ceramic heater like the ones used in herps or heating perch. We all know cold is the problem with them, and I have seen very well taken-care of HH in Montréal suffer from frost bite and losing a toe or worst a wing tip... So I've decided to let them to people in southern countries and go for a strudy red-tailed hawk! lol As I can't release the bird, it will be with me for years so I better make a good choice!
go to a boating place... all the rope is is some thick manilla/sisal rope. Shelf perches are okay on free lofted birds. As stated before, a freelofted bird won't perch where it will damage it's feathers. you just have to make sure that the perch is large enough for them to sit on and to turn around on, then it should be okay. You should go for a variety of perching surfaces, from flat, to various diameters of round. That way the positions of the feet change from perch to perch and bumble is less likely.
After over 12 hours of work, half of the shelves are down... The remaining ones are assembled with nails and I gave up, I'm gonna call daddy to the rescue! ;D I found coroplast and the boat ropes, thanks to your suggestions, and I'm now wondering what I will use as bars for the windows and the side. I thought about thick wood rods, but hell I saw the prices today, at over 5$ for a 6 feet rod I wil be ruined if I use that! I love the natural look of wood and I was wondering if the bars really have to be round, there are some 1 inch thick square pieces of wood that we used to protect the sides of outdoor stairs (don't know the english word sorry... must buy a dictionnary! lol), but they are really square, not rounded... Or I could use metallic bars, but I really don't like the look of that! The left corner where there were shelves hanging from the ceiling:
Post by Master Yarak on Dec 10, 2006 23:16:08 GMT -5
If the bird grabs the square bars it could hold onto them. Wood deteriorates it can weaken maybe before you notice. EMT is metal, it may not be pretty but the bird could find no hold on it. It would not break or rot.. There you have my advice you get what you pay for. Yarak
If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music he hears, however measured or far away
EMT... Don't know what it is exactly, will get some infos as anyway I have to change my plans. May look for bamboo but it may be expansive too... Don't have money problems, but I may have to redo my budget! lol An idea of how I want the place to look like once finished (don't know how to do the bars in front of the windows in this logiciel...). You'll understand why I worry about the cost of teh bars...:
Front view:
Back view with wall removed:
Last Edit: Dec 11, 2006 10:38:51 GMT -5 by kitana8
Post by HawkingRage on Dec 15, 2006 22:11:51 GMT -5
i used PVC for my bars. i didnt do what i wanted with them before i installed them but when i had all my reptiles i took pvc and scorched them to make them brown like wood. they stay strong and they work just fine... condowit works fine as well. just dont use wood and keep it round like yarak said.
Rage dose't that make the PVC more brittle? I have heard bad stories about PVC getting dry rotted and failing? Do you replace it every few years of so? Just asking-Zach
I used to think i knew some things. But i'm not so sure anymore.
Post by HawkingRage on Dec 16, 2006 21:50:31 GMT -5
well this is my second year. and as i said before i didnt do it with this mew as i wanted to.
no it does not make it more brittle, so long as you dont torch the hell out of it so that it starts bending. that happens cause you are melting it. what i am talking about is just scorching it like you would some pastries just to make it change color. if you use the blue flame from a torch that happens easy and looks fine. i used them for all my arboreal snakes and never had a problem. they would pull and push the pvc with no problems of breakage. make sure you use a sponge with the scrubbing side to clean right after you torch. i let all my pvc air dry, never water cool. this lets it cool back to its desired densities. my next mews i am using metal tubing or condowit. spelling?
An update... I received the coroplast, 300$... ouf! And I managed to glue 1 sheet on the wall but then the temperature dropped below 5 celsius and the glue cannot work then so I'll have to wait for a milder temp to continue with the coroplast. On the other hand, Daddy came to the rescue to help with the wall skeleton. Look at what 2 hours of help can do! We put the divider wall up and all I have to do now is to cut the wood necessary to fill the wall, one plank every 2 feet, and screw them in place. The aviary itself will be 20 x 14 and the working area 20 x 8.
A detail of how we managed to plan the inners of the wall, the top and bottom planks are formed in a «T» shape. Finally I won't be putting bars for the moment as I will be short in $$$, but plan to do it next year. For now the coroplast will be on the right side, so I'll just have to build the bars on a support, unscrew the planks and screw the bars at their former place. Couldn't be easier.
And for the bars, I'll probably go with square 1x1 wood planks used for patio finition. I've seen it used in a large rehab center for 10 years without problems, but on internet I received only bad comments about them. However I saw a mews pictured on the modern apprentice website that seems to be almost entirely made of this material... It is not bought yet. Right now I am just badly pissed off by the cost of these materials, the cheapest I found (wood dowels) would cost 70$ per window (x6 windows...), let alone the future barred wall itself...