Introduction

Firstly welcome to the brand new forum section,where you can follow our attempts to breed a young pair of black headed caiques. Myself and my parnter are both potty about animals and nature and have gathered quite a housefull over the years.

We have succesfully bred Congo African Greys for a number of years and have just recently added to our managery with a pair of Caiques.

We strongly believe,all animals should be treated with upmost respect and all our breeding birds are in outside aviaries where we believe it is their right to have access to the elements ,they have adjoining sheds on their flights which is where they can shelter and their nest boxes are situated .

We believe that our birds should breed out of happiness and security rather than forcefull confinement,anyway,heres a few pics of me and hubby with some of our baby greys,
please remember we are new to breeding caiques so dont take our word for gospel, this is just 1 persons experiences, stick with us

Stage 1 aviary build

Ok,so weve decided to get another pair of birds and the desicions been made to get caiques.

First thing first is where to site our new aviary.

As we already had our shed in place that desicion was already made for us,nice and sheltered and close to the house too so we could watch all of their "crazy capers".

We beleive as in cages, the general rule should be bigger the better.

Allthough the floor is completely slabbed we left little planting pockets and the level slightly slopes away to avoid any water pooling in the flight.

We were planning on using a alutek-rosemary mead flight but decided to custom build as they didnt have the size we were after.

Firstly, buy your mesh well in advance of any building and leave it outside in the elements,this allows the natural oxodisation of the mesh,this must be scrubbed off before you allow your birds into their new home(use warm water and distilled vinegar,then rinse) as this is extrememly toxic and you could poison your new arrivals.

We constructed the framing out of 3x2 pressurised timber, then we covered the framing in 12 gauge mesh,make sure you cover every inch as like most birds,caiques like to chew,when its time to stain/paint you wood,make sure its pet/animal friendly.

Caiques need a little more warmth in the winter than most parrots,so the next job was to insulate the shed and run some electrics out to allow for a radiator in the winter months, to reinforce the shed we added more posts and boarded off the inside to irradicate any draughts,we added a macaw cage bolted it to the inside of the shed and made the hole out to the flight, we then placed a curtain across for a bit more seclusion and privacy with the added benefit of keeping the warmth in in winter.

When it came to the flight we planted a climbing tree(make sure its safe wood)thats covers the width and height of the flight,over that we placed some perspex for some outside shelter,we use play bark on the floor of our flights and weve also added some planting,some in pots some in the ground.

And most importantly for the caiques,lots and lots of toys, dont forget foot toys too..........anyway,heres the build in pictures.................the flight measures.......10x5x6...the shed 7x5

Vikky's Breeding Caiques Pt 2

Vikky's Breeding Story is told and by ©copyright of Vikky, as are the images. This story and or the images must not be copied or taken from Caique Crazy Capers without prior permission from Vikky