Tuesday, May 12, 2009

Perches for my Lovebirds

Noticed that I used Perches instead of just a Perch? That is because, perches is where lovebirds stay most of the time.

Lovebirds love to play inside their cage. They will climb, fly, bite anything, and flying from one perch to another is good form of an exercise for them.

Perches in my breeding cages



I see to it that there are at least two (2) perches in all of my breeding cages and both should be stable and not wiggling. The perch is one of the most important elements that you put inside the breeding cage, because this is where they usually mate. If this is wiggling, obviously they may not be able to mate perfectly, causing infertility to their eggs.

And since breeding cage’s size is limited, I could not afford to put two horizontal perches. What I did is one horizontal perch, positioned at around 8 inches from the floor and one flat perch, which is positioned paralleled to the hole of their nesting box.

The flat perch is 7 inches long and 6 inches wide, giving them more space so that their tails won’t always touch the cage’s wall. I’m a bit hesitant using this kind of perch at first as I really do not know what could be the effect. This is experimental and turned out OK as that they use this most of the time whenever they would like to take some nap outside their nesting box.

The horizontal perch is where they usually mate. Maybe because it puts them into a steadier position because they can clamp their feet to it.

Perches in my flight cage

I also put two (2) perches for my flight cage, but this time both are horizontal and at least one of them is swinging. Lovebirds adore swinging perches, as if they are landing on a real small branch of a tree causing it to swing.

I see to it that one is positioned at around 15 inches from the bottom and the other one is around 40 inches from the bottom of the cage. The lower perch is positioned a bit on the front side of the cage and the perch at the top is positioned a bit at the back of the cage. This is to ensure that lovebirds sitting at the lower perch do not have droppings landing on them.