- Hey guys, Jamieleigh here from BirdTricks
and I wanted to go ahead and give you guys
a new aviary tour.
I've changed some things on my aviaries
and they have multiple uses now
and are really benefiting my birds in amazing ways
and I wanted to go ahead and share
those changes that I made with the rest of you
in case it benefits you as well.
I also wanted to touch on some aviary dos and don'ts
and what to look for when picking cages
appropriate for your sized parrot.
So first I'm gonna walk you guys through
my first set up, which is my indoor set up.
This is for the cold months
where my birds are indoors, and this consists of
four five by eight aviaries,
all of which are divided except for one,
and I currently use these massive rolls of butcher paper
and just pull them through the bottom,
or sometimes I'll move the cage all together
and cut them and take care of them.
(paper rustling)
But this is my indoor setup,
so this is where my birds sleep.
This is the setup I use to bring them in at night
if they need to be indoors and warm.
My second setup is in my backyard of my house
and consists of this 15 foot diameter aviary.
Now, the bottom is currently cement,
and this is probably my favorite enclosure
of all of the ones that I have.
This is from Corners Limited.
It's a custom cage and it's absolutely amazing.
I love how much space it has.
I find that my birds are very active in it.
It's the largest enclosure I've ever been able to get.
I just really, really love this enclosure.
Now, I've never actually dealt with Corners Limited myself
because I got this from a friend,
however, I've heard really good things.
And you can have any sort of customized cage made
to whatever dimensions that you need,
and everything about these enclosures are customizable,
which is really exciting and cool.
So not only is it a favorite of mine,
but I truly believe this is a favorite of all of my birds.
I have housed my doves, my conures, my medium sized birds,
my macaws, everybody in here.
Next you can see I have three aviaries
next to this 15 foot diameter,
and these are six foot diameter aviaries.
These are also on cement.
And you'll notice that the one on the far right
has plastic on it, and that is because
during the colder months we put heat lamps in there.
We cover it in plastic to keep it really,
really warm for our doves.
If you follow me closely you'll notice
that those aviaries in my backyard
are probably used the least.
My third setup is an outdoor setup in the garden
at my parent's house.
So these aviaries are the ones I've had the longest.
They're the ones that I absolutely love.
I got from Custom Cages originally over 10 years ago.
And then the ones in my backyard are the ones
that I ordered later that were supposed to be like these
but are just not built as nicely.
So, again, cement tiles are on the bottom
of my garden aviaries, so that is now
what I'm exclusively using at the bottom
of my outdoor aviaries.
I simply hose it off, wash it off to clean it,
and yeah, this is one of my favorite setups.
These aviaries are also six foot diameter
with the one in the front being a four foot diameter aviary.
So this is definitely one of my favorite setups,
my birds really love being in this garden,
but again, they grew up here,
so they're very familiar with this spot.
My parents have had a lot more consistency
in staying in one place than myself,
so these have been here for a long time
and they have come out for many, many summers now
and it's fantastic.
We also have raised them free flying on my parent's property
so they definitely know that this is their home.
(birds chirping)
What are you doing?
What are you doing over there?
(birds chirping) (giggles)
Hi.
There you are.
- She found me.
- She found you.
(laughing)
- [Daughter] Mom, what are you doing to her?
- [Jamieleigh] Throwing them to you.
(giggles)
So, a lot of you know
that I love housing my birds outside.
I believe they should have fresh air.
They should have natural sunlight.
It's amazing for their feathers.
It's amazing for their respiratory systems.
I like providing my birds with as large of enclosures
as I can possible afford or have space for,
and it's just something that's really near and dear to me.
Now, I used to use normal, normal indoor cages,
but honestly after using outdoor aviaries
on tour for about two years,
where we set them up and tore them down
every single week at a new location,
I just converted.
I just said, I only want to provide my birds
aviaries to live in instead of your typical cage.
I wanted to give them as much space as possible,
and I also feel like with aviaries
I have a lot more room for enrichment basically
to keep them more happy in that environment
and give them a lot more to do
than I found in your typical birdcage
that you see in a house.
I also love the idea of being able to move the cage
that they are in indoors outdoors.
I like that it has that dual purpose.
Now, ever since losing my male galah, Bandit,
last year it's, it's been a major mission
to just keep health and safety at the forefront
and just stay ahead of things that could
you know, potentially harm my birds
that we may be unaware of, and to just
always improve their quality of life every single year.
And that really comes down to care.
I look at my environment and the things that I'm providing
and I try to make sure that I'm just doing
the best that I possibly can by them.
So every year I want to make sure
that I'm making huge improvements
for their quality of life,
and that they are only being enriched
more and more each year.
(clears throat)
(sighs)
Okay.
(sighs)
That talk doesn't get easier.
Looking for a little pigeon.
(bird squawking) You gonna walk?
Where you going?
(bird squawking)
Where you going, what you doing?
(bird squawking)
(chuckling)
Wanna help me get food ready?
All right, hurry up, come on.
(bird squawking)
A few other changes that I made
towards the end of last year
that I didn't really get to keep everybody up on
or show you guys were the fact that I,
was the fact that I put, were, I don't know,
I was trying to figure out how to list them.
Was the fact that I had a friend come over
and put wheels, or casters, on the bottoms
of my five by eight aviaries.
Now I've converted my garage,
it's temperature controlled, the whole bit.
It has about three air filters in there, two fans.
It has everything.
And I've converted my garage to be able to
house my birds during the colder months.
And then, when I have them indoors,
I have play stands everywhere, like this,
and that's how they come in and spend time indoors
is on these play stands and foraging trees
all around my house.
Are you guys watching Funniest Home Videos?
We are.
Comet is.
As far as their normal enclosures that they live in,
or sleep in I should say,
those were all five by eight aviaries
and some of them were divided, and some of them were not.
Now, this year I actually ended up
dividing one of the ones that was just open,
and that's just so I can give my birds
more of their own solo space
so that I don't always have to house
multiple birds together,
because I found that being home
longer amounts of time than I'm ever used to,
I was actually having to house my birds
together more often than they preferred.
I can really track weight
and see how everybody's doing individually by,
it's gonna sound gross but I'm a bird person,
inspecting their poop and knowing whose it was
and all those things.
So it also makes it that when my birds
are outside or on flight trips
they're more happy to be together and come together.
So I found that dividing one of my aviaries
that was not divided was a huge bonus for my birds
as far as spending more time at home
and having them be happier that way.
Woo, girlies!
Girly, girly, girls!
Yeah!
- [Dave] Coming in hot!
- [Jamieleigh] Woo!
That was fun.
That was so fun. (birds squawking)
Yeah!
Woo, Chrissy! (birds squawking)
- [Daughter] I've got the girlies.
- [Jamieleigh] Here comes Frizzy.
Woo!
Good job Frizzy. (bird squawking)
(daughter speaking inaudibly)
- Huh?
The other bonus is these casters
that my friend Buster, thank you Buster,
installed on the bottom of these aviaries.
He concocted the whole thing and made it out of metal
and made it work, it was amazing.
So he had certain requirements that he had
to stick within because I didn't want my birds
to be able to go out and under.
A lot of you have asked me how it's been switching from sand
over to butcher paper.
Now I got these giant rolls of butcher paper
that go the width of the cage, so that I can just
pull them through.
It's awesome, as long as (chuckles)
my birds don't leave giant chunks of toys
that can't fit under, and my birds
don't go down there and shred up the paper.
Which Jinx absolutely loves doing.
(metal clanging)
So it can be a little bit tricky.
Sometimes it works great, other times it's just
such a pain, so a lot of the time,
in the colder months, I'll move my birds inside
for a bath or just to hang out and I'll change cages
without any birds in there because it's just way easier.
However, when the weather's nice,
I can actually move these cages out, these aviaries out,
because they're on casters, yes!
So the amazing thing about the improvement this year
versus last year, is last year
all I could really do during the times where
the weather was nice for a few hours during the day,
so I live in Idaho, we have all four seasons.
That means at night it can be 30 degree temperatures
and then during the day it's like mid 60s.
But it's only for a few hours, and I wanted
those few hours, I wanted to give those
to my birds and have them be outside
as much as possible getting that fresh air,
the sunlight, it's so important for them
to give that as often as possible
and it kills me inside when I cannot give that.
So it's something that's incredibly important to me
and a top priority for me to give to my birds.
So the cool thing about having the casters on
is I can literally push my aviaries out.
I can push them outside, into the sunlight,
and then I can just simply push them back in.
It is the most amazing thing,
I'm so happy, my birds are so happy,
it's greatly improved the quality of life,
overall for all of us.
I'm much happier, just 'cause I feel better
seeing them so happy, and even if they only get
a few hours in the day during a typical,
like, spring or a fall day,
it's awesome, it's better than I could do
the year before and it feels really really good.
Right, we got Rocko's breakfast
of green peas, carrots, beets, blackberries and blueberries.
Rocko!
Here you go!
Hey crazy can. (bird clacking)
Hey crazy can! (bird clacking)
Breakfast!
Going for the blueberries first.
(bird clacking)
This year, another improvement I made
is I got a pressure washer!
I was borrowing my dad's to see how I liked it,
and I was astonished.
A lot of you may or may not know
I have a steam cleaner, so in the winter
I was using my steam cleaner,
but oh man guys, it takes, I mean I have a,
a fairly big one, it lasts about an hour and a half-ish,
depending on how high pressure I'm using it.
But then you know you have to wait for it
to get hot, you have to refill it, the whole thing
and I found myself only getting, you know,
certain panels of the aviaries done
and never a whole aviary.
It felt like I always had more to do.
This year, with my pressure washer,
which I got my own instead of borrowing my dad's,
but initially I borrowed his to make sure
that I like it, I didn't know what to do with myself
because I was done cleaning cages in about 15 minutes.
(laughs) And I just thought, I've never seen them
this clean, I don't know what to do with myself,
I kind of thought the task would never be over.
So those improvements have made me feel
really really good about this year.
At the end of last year I had also
put cement down in all of my aviaries,
that felt really great.
The birds hardly got to use it though
'cause it was at the end of the season,
so that feels like a really really good
new thing this year to get to use
for an entire summer season.
So it feels really good, the improvements feel awesome.
As always, I'm always open for improving more
so if you guys see things that you feel like
could use improvement in how I'm doing it
or seeing an easier way (laughs) please tell me.
It's not always obvious when you're right there
that close to what you're doing.
You guys had some great solutions last year
and I'm always looking at the comments
and reading your comments and seeing
what I can do better and I hope that this helps
you guys get some ideas to do better by your birds as well.
Because I am always promoting bigger is better
when it comes to cages, aviaries, enclosures,
what have you, whatever you want to call them,
I want to make sure that you guys
are very mindful and aware of proper bar spacing
to be using, so I'm going to put it
in the video description for you,
and link to a few different places
that you can get more information
on picking cages, picking enclosures,
where to get them, et cetera, et cetera.
Now these aviaries that I have, I love them,
they are from customcages.com.
However, I ordered them a long time ago.
They are about 15 years old?
Maybe a little less.
They're at least 10 years old.
And since ordering them, when I re-ordered
from that company, they have changed
a lot of their materials and how they build things
and it's not as sturdy and it's not as nice.
So my original aviaries that I got from them
which are the ones you'll see at my parents house
in the garden, as well as the ones in my garage,
I love those, but the newest stuff from them
I am not a fan of.
Another one of the cool things
about these aviaries having wheels
is that I can put them all in different areas.
So as you guys know, I rotate my birds a lot
into different aviaries so that,
basically they're getting a different environment
all the time, and they're not becoming cage territorial
or possessive of their aviary, or their space.
So this is one of the things
that kind of decreases that problem
or that aggression issue, and I've always moved my birds
into different aviaries all the time.
Now this has also saved me from having to rotate toys.
I tend to just put toys in wherever,
and then I just rotate birds instead of toys
which works out really great for me.
However, with these aviaries on wheels,
I can literally put them in different places as well,
so I don't always have to wheel them back
in the exact same spot, which has been
really interesting and fun for me to mess around with.
Now the only bummer is that these things
don't work as well in the winter.
So although they're still on wheels,
I obviously am not wheeling them out
on the driveway during the wintertime.
So cleaning is still kind of a drag for me.
I'm struggling with having so much waste
with this butcher paper.
I don't have to clean them as often
because my birds do eat all their food
so I'm not dealing with rotten food
at the bottom of the cage or anything like that.
However, they're still destroying toys,
they're still pooping of course,
there's still quite a bit of mess
and if they go down there and rip up the paper
then it goes straight to the concrete
and of course I want to keep that clean
so I do end up changing the paper.
So that's a little bit of a struggle.
I'm struggling with, now I feel like
I have so much more waste than I did before
with my other method.
So I've tried putting pieces of either newspaper
or butcher paper down just in areas
that I know my birds are more likely
to just poop in one spot,
you know how they have their favorite spot,
or are more likely to make a mess
right under the food dishes,
and just pulled those pieces up,
and that does somewhat work, except for the fact
that I move my birds around, and they all
have different preferences.
So other than the food being a very normal area
for them to obviously have more of a mess,
they do have different preferences
on where they stay, so unless I keep the birds
pretty consistent in certain aviaries,
I don't know where those spots are right away
in each one, 'cause it always changes.
So that was a little bit what I ran into with that,
however when I do travel without some,
they stay in the aviaries and make it really easy
on the birds that are, so he's able to do that,
but me not so much.
So (sighs) yeah.
Hey guys, Jamieleigh here from BirdTricks
and I wanted to get interrupted by my phone.