Outdoor Aviary

A well constructed outdoor aviary is the foundation to your bird breeding success. There are many factors that are needed to be considered when designing a great outdoor aviary. The number one factor is being able to provide a draft free interior for winter and air flow for the heat of summer.

Building Method

Here is a description of the methods and materials I used to construct my purpose built gouldian outdoor aviary. It is approximately 9 feet by 9 feet with an open flight section. This aviary is very secure as gouldian finches are very expensive in large numbers. The main door, all the walls roof and floor are a full metal construction with vertical steel bars to finish off the security of the main entrance door.

The frame of this outdoor bird aviary was built using steel tubing which was welded into sections and interconnected with tube that fit into the other sections so if there is a need to disassemble the future it could be done easily by unscrewing all of the sections. A mig welder was used as well as a standard arc welder to join the tubing together.

Footings were used to build the outdoor aviary off the ground for two reasons. The first reason the ground was not level. The second but most important reason was to avoid damp floors and rotting of the floor in two the bird rooms.

The floor and the frame concrete footing were first to be built and installed. Sisilation was fixed to the outer frame or shell with an external covering of color bond sheet metal. The sheet metal was attached with self drilling screws and pop rivets for security to prevent theft of birds.Pop rivets would have to be drilled out by a thief and this is not easy with stainless pop rivets.

The floor has galvanized sheet metal attached on the bottom to prevent rodents from chewing holes through the plywood floor structure. Fiberglass batts are then installed in all the wall, roof and floor cavities between the inner layer of plywood and outer layer of sisilation. This insulates the aviary from the external heat or cold. All of the internal skin is made of plywood for the internal walls and roofing. The combination of color bond, sisilation, insulation batts and plywood is very effective method to reduce the extreme heat and cold from being an issue to the interior of the both bird rooms.

When you step into this outdoor gouldian aviary on a cold winters day it is surprising how warm the interior actually is. With a bit of sunshine shinning through the clear roof sections the interior warms up very nicely. It is important to build your aviary with the open flight facing the rising morning sun. In the winter this helps to warm the birds up after those cold nights. In the summer the hot sun set is on the covered side of the outdoor aviary reducing the amount of heat inside.

Colony Breeding Room

The colony bird room is approximately 6 x 6 feet with 4 main perches, feeding and water stations. The colony breeding room is entered via a 3/4 height door via the selective breeding room. This door has a latch which is locked from the selective breeding room. It is possible to hang about 6 breeding boxes off the 3 walls. This is the maximum number of nest boxes recommended in a room of this size.

The birds are free to leave and enter the colony room via the bird door. The door is operated from inside the selective cage breeding section of the aviary by pushing or pulling the orange piece of plastic connected to a rectangular piece of sheet metal in between two plywood runners. with the door closed it stops the gouldians from entering the open flight section. When it is approaching dusk the birds will return back into their room to roost for the night till the morning.

It is very important to construct your aviary wall linings with wood as the gouldian finch will roost right up against a wall at night. If it is a very cold night the bird will loose allot of body heat if the wall is made of metal such as corrugated iron or colorbond. My aviary walls are all filled with insulation batts and lined with sisalation the finished with an inner lining of plywood. This provides my birds with a surface which will not draw their body heat away from them over night. You can easily loose a gouldian to a cold night with metal walls if they are not lined with wood.

Selective Breeding Room

The selective breeding room has 12 separate holding or dividable breeding cages. Selective breeding gouldian finches is my prefered method for breeding gouldians. The room also has a sink with 2 cupboards underneath, central door locking, an alarm system, a solar panel to recharge 4 x 18amphr batteries,internal low voltage down lights, internal and external temperature gauge. The extreme temperatures that my aviary are exposed to are as follows: summer-46degrees Celsius(115 Fahrenheit) winter 1degrees Celsius( 34 Fahrenheit).