Our bird’s feet are effectively saved from that by their perches. Ok, so what has this got to do with birds? Well it’s maybe not as critical an issue with birds because we’re not seeing foot injuries due to a bird being permanently stuck on a grill. He uses the wire as a toilet, which prevents him from becoming covered in his own poo. My elderly disabled galah benefits from part wire/part ceramic tile flooring. They found that rats in this style of housing were intelligent enough to use the grill as a toilet (without needing to be trained) and that they would then spend the rest of their time on the solid base. Instead, guidelines were implemented to make 50% of an enclosure’s base a grill and 50% solid, which effectively gave the rats a choice of what type of flooring they wanted to stand on. A completely solid base was therefore out of the question as it was impractical to have a lab rat running around in its own excrement. The studies that I read in class, were looking for alternative housing arrangements for lab rats.įor fairly obvious reasons, a lab rat’s environment needs to be able to be kept sterile or in the very least clean. The foot injuries alone meant that the practice of keeping a rat on a grill 24-7 was cruel. Well, you can imagine the sorts of problems that would cause for a rat. Instead it would be sitting on that wire grill at all times. However, in a rat’s case, the rat would not be spending most of its time sitting on a perch. Traditionally, it had been common practice to have a wire grill at the base of a rat’s cage – much for the same reasons that we do with birds. These studies focused specifically on the floor of a rat’s cage. Instead, we were looking at if a rat does happen to be kept in captivity, what guidelines should be in place to ensure it’s kept in decent conditions. So in this particular instance we weren’t getting into the rights and wrongs of animal experimentation (I really don’t want to start that debate here).
#Bird cage floor grids how to#
The studies we were looking at were concerned with the ethical guidelines of how to set up a lab rat’s enclosure. In one of my vet science university subjects, we were looking at some ethical studies regarding lab rats. My Blue & Gold Macaw, Fid, seems to enjoy foraging in grass if it's dumped on the aviary roof.
A mouse can’t easily burrow into an aviary if it isn’t resting on the ground. They’re commonly used as a means of preventing rodent infestation. Similarly, suspended aviaries are great because they’re easy to clean. If a wild bird lands on one of your outdoor aviaries and just happens to poo, it’s nice to know that there’s a grill in place for it to fall through, effectively preventing your birds from coming into contact with it or any diseases that might be transmitted by it. The threat of wild birds needs to be considered as well. It’s not just your own bird’s poo that might be of concern. The main one is obviously that a bird’s poo and waste will fall through the grill, which let’s face it – is a much healthier alternative to a bird eating spoiled food or getting covered in its own excrement. Most people (myself included) have some sort of wire grill at the base of their setups. There are many different ways of setting up the lower half of your cages and aviaries. My galahs Merlin & Nemo checking out the day's deposit of fresh grass
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