Birdcages
When I first began looking for a big bird cage for my two parakeets, I wasn’t sure how big it should be or whether Charlie and Sweetie really needed a bigger cage. So I started to ask friends in a chat room about what they thought. One of them suggested that I look for “flight bird cages”. I really didn’t know what that was, but he told me that it was for my birds so that they could actually fly in the cage. That’s why it is called that.Crazy me, but how was I to guess! When I looked online, I couldn’t find exactly what I wanted right away. So I decided to dedicate a site just to flight bird cages.
I have a lot of information about why birds really should be able to fly inside of a cage, rather than all the time just out of their cage in the house. my birds have loved their new cage and really do seem much happier. Some of my points of why this type of cage is good for them are below.
Why I think Flight Bird Cages are necessary for birds:
My birds are much happier when they can fly around in their cage.The large cage lets them be very healthy since they can do their flying anytime they get the urge to. It keeps their little bodies strong!
They are much safer in their cage if there are other pets in your home, such as a cat or dog. Especially so when you can not be home with them all the time, they can still fly about in their cage. One word of advice that I read somewhere, so use your own idea on this, don’t put your birds in a round cage because it doesn’t give them any points of reference and they will be confused. That’s why a lot of bird cages probably are hexagon or at least have corners.
The right bird houses are perfect for breeding birds.It was an eye opener for me to acknowlege Charlie and Sweeties were mating after being able to fly around in the cage. So, if you have had no success with breeding your birds, the reason might be because their cage is too small.Your pet bird needs to be flying in order for them to mate!
It makes your birds feel free. When it is warm outside, I make sure that their cage is outdoors once in a while. I think when they whistle at the people that go by is a very funny and cute thing. The people seem to get a laugh out of it, and my neighbors love it.
You can clean the cage easier because of the room you have in it. I found that the easier cages are to clean, they get changed and cleaned a lot more often. Even my son doesn’t mind cleaning it, and it takes less time than it used to with the smaller cage.
The flight bird cage I got for my birds is on a pedestal, so they are at eye level with us. They love being able to be right there with us and talk to us a lot more often. That way they can join the family more often and still be very safe.The birds were so used to seeing us when they were in the small cage that was carted around wherever we were. Even with this larger cage for them, it still makes it so manageable. Don’t forget, birds like to be part of the family too.
Just so you’ll know the size that I got for Charlie and Sweetie, remember they are parakeets. Their cage is 32” width by 22” depth.At the 59 inch mark, it is a good elevation. The flight cages are a bit more expensive than just the small little bird cages that you probably had when you first got your birds. But believe me, Charlie and Sweetie are such happy, healthy and breeding birds now that they have their new house. I hope you will come back often, as I am going to be adding more material to this website.While you are still here, if you would like to leave a message about some of your tricks, please do so. Again, thanks for stopping by and hope to see you again.
Keeping Chickens In Your Backyard Has Great Benefits.
I’ve been wanting to raise my own chickens for years now. I finally found time and built a medium sized chicken coop. The plans I bought over the internet made the process really easy. The ad for the book about how to build a chicken coop said that a 15 year old could build it. I guess that was meant to be a smart 15 year old! I can use a hammer, a saw and a screwdriver and that’s about all you’ll need by way of tools.
I want to tell you a bit more about my hobby of keeping chickens – I do it just as a hobby, not professionally, and see if I can help you to make some decisions if you’re thinking about keeping chickens in your backyard.
I remember as a boy, chicken was a meal for a special, celebratory occasion. Today of course chicken is very common and hardly special at all. Chicken factories produce so many millions of birds that the availability and price of the meat has come down. The way chickens are raised in batteries is also a major reason why I keep my own brood, in my own suburban backyard.
If you want to be put off eating eggs and chickens, visit a chicken factory farm. The cruelty these birds have to endure for their whole life is nothing short of a disgrace and a blot on our conscience. I had seen enough cancerous, deformed and deranged hens, picking at their own and others flesh out of sheer madness, that I stopped eating chickens and eggs for quite a while until free range products became readily available.
Then I discovered that free range did not always mean what I thought it meant – what it is supposed to mean – and I decided to keep my own chickens in my own chicken coop.
I did not intend to go on a crusade against chicken farms here so let me tell you of some other very good reasons to keep your own chickens.
Fairly obviously, the eggs and the meat come in real handy. The eggs from a truly free-range chicken are nothing short of spectacularly delicious. The yolk is not that washed out colour of a battery egg from a chicken pumped full of estrogen and growth hormone. Instead, it’s a bright, vivid yellow/orange colour with an absolute burst of flavour.
I know some folk who made the mistake of giving their birds names so they will never slaughter their chickens for the table. I keep my birds anonymous so that I am not emotionally distraught when I slaughter them. The meat from your own homegrown chicken is much better taste and quality than a supermarket chicken. It’s plump and has a taste that is just outstanding. The skin roasts to a delicious crispiness. I don’t know exactly how and why but it’s just markedly better tasting than a supermarket bird. I think it’s the chicken feed and whats in it the has a long term effect on the quality and taste of the meat.
The freshness of the meat and eggs from your backyard brood is a contributory factor to the improved taste of course, but the biggest influence on the taste of the products is the absence of chemicals in the birds diet. Chemicals fed to battery raised chickens destroys the natural taste of the eggs and the meat. The chemicals, by the way, also find their way into your system and so you have also probably ingested female hormones and steroids with every egg and piece of chicken you’ve ever eaten. Many factory birds are fed on fishmeal feeds and the flavour of the fishmeal leeches into the meat.
In times like these when most people are trying to save some household costs and also trying to be more environmentally responsible, building a chicken coop and keeping your own chickens is a fairly substantial step in the right direction and it’s very easy to do. So, I guess the environmental impact is another good reason to have your own birds.
The fertiliser produced by the chickens is fantastic for your garden. Gardeners can save money and use better, non-phosphate laden fertiliser.
Since the kids moved out there is often leftover food in our refrigerator that goes to waste. Well I should say used to go to waste because the chickens love leftovers. Onions and garlic are not good for them but all other foods are welcomed by them. Not just leftovers but all the scraps form meal preparation as well. They are little fertiliser factories taking the scraps and the peels and turning it into fertiliser that enhances the plants and vegetables we have growing. It’s lovely to see the cycle of nature as it should be. I let them out of their enclosure to trim the lawn every so often. Like little lawnmowers!
Some people look upon their chickens as pets, and for those people that is a true benefit of keeping chickens. For me – well I don’t see the chickens as anything other than foodstuff.
If you build the right chicken coop for your intended number of chickens and for the location then your chicken coop becomes a pleasure to maintain. The chciken coop should be large enough, well ventilated and comfortable for the birds. Happy birds produce more tasty eggs.
Let me tell you about building your own chicken coop. It’s not that difficult if you have basic skills. If you’ve used basic tools before, you will have no problem. That’s about it. The plans I eventually bought are step-by-step type plans so it was easy to follow. I was fortunate to choose a book of plans that also had other very valuable and useful information in it. Such as: where to place you coop, how to ensure that it doesn’t get too hot in the chicken coop and how to construct a coop that is easy to clean. Also, the book contained advice on how to choose the correct type of bird for your area.
This is very good value from a book that only costs about $30. I sourced all the timber required for my chicken coop at a local salvage yard. I built a medium sized chicken coop for under $200 and there is a local (major) hardware outlet that sells what I think is a lesser product for over $950. I saved a packet. My $200 investment was returned to me in under 6 months just on the value of eggs produced. By the way I keep 10 hens and I get 6 to 8 eggs every day. I sell 2-3 doz eggs a week and although I charge almost double the supermarket price, I have no shortage of eager customers!
You can buy the book that I used on the internet for only $29.95. Just click here. I really found it to be very useful – exactly what I needed. You get it as an instant download, as soon as you pay. The online payment process is 100% secure.
That’s it. I hope that this information was of some help to you and I hope you enjoy building your chicken coop as much as I enjoyed the task of building mine. It’s a good thing to do and the upside is substantial. Have fun!
Preventing Window Strikes
The relationship between windows and birds comes in different degress of deadliness. Sometimes it’s just a quick peck of bird meeting glass. Others it’s a small series of crashes and a flutter of wings. The worst, however, are the jarring impacts that resonate throughout an entire house, leaving you and your family members startled and often crippling or killing the bird. Sadly, these impacts are far more common than you might think. An article in the magazine, Audubon, David Malakoff writes window strikes kill between 100 million and 1 billion birds every year. According to an NPR story, Professor Daniel Klem of Mulhenberg College things that Malakoff’s estimate is too conservative, and that the real number easily exceeds 1 billion birds in the United States alone.
Why do window strikes happen?
It’s hard to know for certain exactly why window strikes happen, but observation has granted some measure of insight. The first, and seemingly most common, rationale is that birds simply cannot see glass. The transparency of the glass makes the window look open, and this is often complicated further by a window on the opposite side of the house. This causes what is commonly referred to as the “tunnel effect,” meaning that the bird believes that the two windows lack glass and thus represent a clear tunnel to fly through.
Another big reason for window strikes by birds is related to reflections. Windows in homes and office buildings sometimes give a good reflection the area around them. So, while the house or building certainly appears to be a house or building, the windows look more like wooded areas which are perfectly safe for flying.
Ways to prevent window strikes
There are a range of possibilities for preventing window strikes. The best method is to take out a window, or to cover it with something dark and non-reflective like cardboard or wood. Sure, taking out a window is a big deal and not very practical for most home owners. Thankfully, with a little understanding as to why birds strike windows, home owners can reduce bird strikes with more people-friendly methods.
Covering Windows
While boarding up windows is an extreme solution, it does prove a point. Putting something between the window’s glass and the outside world can both alert a bird to a physical object and prevent reflection. The last line for many people seems to be when such a covering starts blocking views. Home owners have several options like summer storm screens, to heavier plastic “shade cloth” and even the commercial CollidEscape film, all of which help to remove transparency and restrict reflection to various extents.
Silhouettes and Obstacles
Another tactic is to prevent the bird from coming near the window. Some people put obstacles such as a bird feeder in front of the window, especially windows that are hit with any frequency. If you notice that your bird feeder is causing birds to strike your window, then moving the feeder further from your house would be a prudent move. Another popular method, which works to varying degrees, is to intimidate birds away by way of statues and silhouettes. A statue of an owl, or a cut out made to resemble a flying hawk can cause an errant bird on a collision course with a window to change course.
The Happy Medium
For many home owners, window strikes are infrequent happenings and thus can easily be remedied by merely moving a bird feeder or placing a hawk silhouette in a tree. For others, more permanent measures must be taken. However, for majority of home owners in areas with heavy avian traffic, there is a happy medium. Make part of the window more obvious with the application of custom window decals or stickers. PUtting decals and stickers on a window makes the glass in the window less transparent and can disturb reflections, minimizing two of the reasons why birds hit windows. Special sticker creating techniques can even make these stickers nearly-invisible to humans while birds staying perfectly visible to birds. Such stickers benefit birds while doing very little to detract from the value humans derive from said windows.
Custom Stickers used to prevent bird strikes can come in a variety of shapes and sizes. Homeowners can make use of seasonal varieties like flowers for spring, snowflakes for winter, and even holiday images. These stickers can even be made in the images of predatory birds, thus mimicking the silhouette effects and adding to the sticker’s effectiveness.
The real key to preventing bird strikes is to change the status quo. This can be done through changing the locations of physical things – like bird feeders and trees – thus forcing birds to alter their flight paths. Or, it can be accomplished by intimidation, through silhouettes of avian attackers. Or, a home owner can change the bird’s perception of the actual window. Stickers, whether they are human-visible or not, make windows more obvious to birds, while screens and covering cloths negate the qualities (reflections and transparency) that make windows harmful to birds in the first place. The question for home owners is to determine which window strike prevention method works best for you.
The Simple Procedure in Building Gourd Bird House
Building gourd bird house with your kids are going to guide their creativeness. One thing that you mustn’t forget, you have to let your kids in increasing their imagination under your guidance.
Equipments
You are going to necessary certain equipments and equipments to build gourd bird house. firstly, put the large dried gourd and the external spray paint and sealer. then, you will require the tools, like a power drill, an eye screw, a 3/8 drills bit, and a scrubbing pad. then, start to make your own gourd bird house.
Designing the House
First of all, you must prepare the gourd. It will require to be dried and cleaned up. Then you should be sure that the gourd is large enough for birds to nest in. The hole that you drill into it must let room for lots of types of birds that you need to attract. try to prevent utilizing moldy gourds, yet if you have one in that condition, you can simply clean it. remember to create sure that the gourd is hard and dry enough before you begin to build your gourd bird house.
Moreover, you are going to require to the hole into the gourd. Once that is complete, you must clean out the inside of the gourd. It is very essential to wear a mask when drilling into gourds. It is because the mold and seed dust from the gourds are able to cause respiratory problems if you breathe in too much. Once you have drilled your big entrance hole, you should be sure to drill three small holes underneath the bird house in order to allow for water drainage.
The third instruction is to put the eye screw into the top of the bird house in order to make it ready to hang. Then, start decorate your gourd bird house. It can be missed unpainted, although it still needs to be sealed to keep it from the rain.
The last step is to paint and seal it. After that, you are ready to hang it and wait for the birds to come to your gourd bird house.
It is able to be put that once you instruct your children in creating gourd bird house, you will feel happy. It is because you are able to also train your kids to increase their imagination and their creativeness in decorating the gourd bird house.
So, what are you waiting for? Find out more about gourd bird house and have a thorough understanding about bird house by clicking the links here!
