The Aviary
A long, long time ago, my dad and I thought about building and aviary and raising and breeding parakeets as a hobby. Well my dad bought a little blue parakeet to see how I liked taking care of one, so around a week ago, about 2 years after talking about doing it, we started building the cage. We started out thinking about maybe something 4 feet wide, 6 or so feet long, and maybe 6 feet high, but we gradually got to the comfortable zone of 8 x 8 x 8. So after one day, we got one wall built. The next day we made the next wall. Today, we made the other two and whatnot. We have done no planning besides little pictures describing where the door should be. We've basically been looking at a corner and saying "what kind of board would go good in that? Try one of those over there," and we'd go with it. We had so much wood lying around from the dismemberment of the patio a couple years back that the only money spent so far was for hardware cloth fencing and a Hardee's lunch. Everything is built except for the door and roof. We'll have to pressure wash and paint, install perches, and put in water and feeders before being able to put birds in it. It looks pretty good aside from being generally caddywumpus, which apparently means lop-sided or not-square. One side is half way up fence, the rest is just boards to give some wind protection. It's going to be cool. Hopefully, we'll be able to sell them to a local pet store. the good thing about breeding and selling animals is that a baby is made for free, aside from feeding costs, which is just a fraction of the overall price to feed all the birds, and you can sell it for nothing but profit. Just dandy. I'm planning on naming them all after Greek mythological characters. Hopefully we won't run out. We might have to delve into some Roman tales. Yes well, building the cage has been fun. Hopefully raising the birds will be fairly simple and enjoyable. I haven't ever done anything like that before, but my dad has, so I don't really know how to operate the whole system. Yeah. Might post pictures of the birds one day in the future. That'll be excitement at its finest.
--5/6/06--
We are done with
the aviary. Parakeet #1 is sleeping there tonight.
--5/29/06--
We got another
parakeet the other day. It is yellow. It is nice looking, but timid.
The only
problem is that Hera (changed from Zeus due to its sex not being male) bothers
the new Zeus all day. I tried to balance out the arguments by putting Scooby the
cockatiel in the cage, who is quite larger than Hera. Now, she will fly to one
and bother it and the fly to the other. All the while being the smallest bird in
the cage. Hopefully once we start getting more birds Hera will learn her place.