n2fisher

Thanks BaxtersMom for the reply! For the past hour Gandalf has been sitting contentedly in his cage on one of his favorite perches with the door wide open. I had him in the kitchen on his playstand for a while while I ate lunch; he liked the ham and turned down the turkey, ate a little lettuce and a bit more tomato... then attacked the chew toy on his playstand for a while. So perhaps he's worn out and just wants to rest for now. Sounds like your situation is very much like mine. I appreciate the comments. My cat is fully declawed, so if it came down to it, I presume the bird would win in any fight, but of course I never want it to come to that.

Thanks for the comments; one statement, everyone seems to be focusing on the clipping v.s. not clipping aspect. Is that really my only option? I could keep him caged more of the time, letting him out for shorter periods. I like seeing him out of the cage, though, and I'm sure he's happier (though he has no shortage of toys to play with). Re: training. USUALLY he will get what I call "uppity" when he needs to go, and I'll hold him over a newspaper and he'll go there. "Uppity" is basically not accepting petting as much, moving around a bit, grabbing my fingers with his beak (he has NEVER bit me, knock on wood .. he's held me tightly (once he wanted to get to the floor; I wasn't paying attention to him and my hand was just off to the side, so he grabbed my finger with his beak, jumped off my lap, and using my finger as a perch swung around and landed on the floor .. the finger was sore for a few minutes but no problem), but not ever broken the skin.). I know his "movement" before he needs to go, so I've basically gotten him trained to tell me when he needs to go, but .. as I said, accidents happen sometimes .. usually when I'm not paying attention.

I used to have that problem with gandalf .. he'd go to my brother-in-law all the time, but I had a hard time getting him out of his cage, or off the top of his cage. Now that my brother-in-law no longer lives here and he's bonded to me even more, he'll come to me almost all the time. One thing that seemed to work for me, when he not in the "mood" to step up, is to move your hand up and in towards him .. touching his breast and pushing him off balance. He'll naturally step up then (unless he bites you). In his cage he would simply run sideways when I did that, but when he's on a perch without much room to move, he has no choice but to step up. Good luck!

Oh .. the cat .. they seem to have a truce. The cat will walk by the cage. Gandalf will periodically be walking along the bottom of the cage looking for treats that he's thrown down there, and the cat will put his paw up on the cage, just wondering what this thing is. He has to semi-stand to reach the cage, but he loves walking around the cage with his tail rubbing against the cage. No missing toes on the cat so far, so .. I guess they are semi-friendly. One of the first times we were away, a clump of black hair (it's a black cat mostly, with white front) was found on the floor near the cage, so I presume they came to an agreement. The cat has the run of the house, so while we are away from home he may spend time playing with the bird for all I know. BUT .. if the bird if flying around the house, he's going to naturally encounter the cat. I have an semi-open floor plan; there are no doors between the living room (where the cage is), the dining room, and the kitchen. He can also go up the half-stairs to the bedrooms. There's a door on our bedroom downstairs, but if he's flying he'd pretty much have the run of the house. Again, not something I'm comfortable with at this point.

OK .. I'll probably get a ton of people telling me "they do that naturally, don't inhibit it", but .. here goes. Many of you may know Gandalf, my 4-year old grey, from the notes that I've posted. I got him about a year or year and a half ago from my brother-in-law, who with his wife bought him from a good pet store in town. They socialized with him for months in the store before bringing him home. He fell on hard times, and really can't afford a bird right now, so he gave him to me. I work from home, so I'm in the living room with the cage virtually 10 hours a day. I've taken to leaving him to play on the outside of his cage with the door open. That hasn't been a problem for the past 6 months or so, he usually likes playing with the toys that I place on top of his cage while he's out. He's starting two things that are a potential problem: 1) He'll climb all the way down to the floor and walk over to me. 2) twice now he's flown from the cage .. a pretty much angled semi-controlled flight down to the ground. I wasn't watching him both times that he took off, so I don't know if he simply stumbled and was trying to break his fall, or if he was trying to fly. He's flown once from the PVC playgym that I made for him -- usually I have a fun toy on it so he just plays with that, but .. he either lost his balance or just wanted to fly that one time. Again, it was a semi-controlled flight; he ran into the cabinet about 3 inches from the floor -- he evidently has one direction, about 30 degrees on a downward slope. Doesn't know how to turn or control his flight. About a year ago I had his wings clipped and was taking him outside on a stand, no leash or anything. Yes, I know that was a big risk, and I promise not to do it again. Anyway, I really didn't like how he looked with the wings clipped, so I made a pact not to do that again. Anyway, I don't think I would like to have him flying around the house; I pretty much control his pooping now by putting newspaper around the areas where he'll be. If he's flying, a) he's going to be pooping everywhere, and b) he's going to run into my cat at some point. He's fairly well trained-poop wise-will usually look down and see if there is newspaper there, but .. he laughs when he does something and misses the paper. (I guess it doesn't help that I laugh as well .. saying "silly bird" or some such). So .. I guess my question is, do I discourage him from learning more about this "flying" thing? My brother-in-law used to spell "f-l-y" around him .. joking that we haven't told the bird that he can f-l-y.. I dunno; I guess most of you will say it's natural for him to fly, perhaps my other question is how do you control the poop if you have a bird flying around your house all day. I don't want to, and I certainly don't want my guests to, sit in a chair and discover that there was something left behind there... Thanks for any comments,

Broomer -- isn't this the day you were bringing Loki home? Any news? Haven't seen anything posted by you, but you are probably overly busy ...

BUT .. my karma was higher than yours! I raised your karma, so now we are tied. Guess I should reply multiple times, so I get to be an expert and no longer a senior.

Wow .. an expert! I'm only an senior user or whatever it calls me. :-( guess it knows my age.

Cagal08 -- I haven't taken him outside since everyone talked about the need of a hardness. There's a high-end petstore (that he was bought from -- by my brother-in-law -- 4 years ago) and they had two or three brands of bird aloe spray; I looked through the ingredients and makes of each and selected one. I only sprayed him 2 or 3 sprays the one time so far -- he seemed to want to head to his bath right after that. I'm trying to get him comfortable with a horse pinate (sp?) chew toy that I bought along with the other purchases -- it has treats in it, but it's soo colorful that gandalf just sits as far away from it as he can.

BaxtersMom -- the trick with mine (as I said, this was the second bath) was to catch him when HE was taking a bath. I removed the waterbowl from his cage (getting him a bit upset at me), and quickly took him to the kitchen and provided the baking dish. It means fast work on your part, but my theory is that you have to "catch them doing it", as you do with kids. Good luck! (And yes, I had almost as much fun watching as Gandalf did enjoying the bath!)

Thanks! Yes, he seems to have a blast doing it. I got some of that aloe water spray and sprayed that on him, and that started his desire to have a bath. He went over to the waterbowl in his cage again, and .. I took it out again, he came right over to me, and I took him to the kitchen and set up the dish with water. The first time he was wet when he came out, but this time he was COMPLETELY soaked .. almost dripping when I initially picked him up! I didn't notice the cloudy water before you mention it .. I presume that's a good thing to get grey dust off of him? He certainly seems much happier after he gets cleaned.

Well .. it's been almost a month, and I was finally able to get Gandalf to take another bath. I didn't get the camera immediately; I started taping about 1/2 way through the bath. Here's a video of it: hopefully will come through like that!

Here's some pics of my stand in it's current incarnation. There are four pics there so you can hopefully picture it better. <br><br>Post edited by: n2fisher, at: 2008/08/15 14:55

Technically you would see a 90 angle instead of a T on the left of the front view, and the right of the side view. You would see the T on the back bar in each case, but there should be a horizontal line showing the 90 degree fitting. Not that critical.

Technically one other error in the drawing. Only two of the four vertical pipes goes all the way to the top, but your front and side views don't show that.

Ahhhh .. think I figured it out. The front view, the green bar goes across and has a cross-bar in the middle that goes to the back. The yellow bar goes diag, the blue bar goes across, the cyan bar goes diag from left to back right. Looks reasonable!

Is he going to play on the bars under it, or just play above the board? Looks stable if he's playing just above the 3' level.

I can't quite figure it out from the picture .. Gandalf doesn't like climbing vertically; he prefers to go from one in the X direction to one in the Y direction (X-Y are both horizontal, Z is vertical). So what I've done is put mine alternating. I see you have diagonols as well. You want enough space so he can comfortably stand at any level, so you don't want a bar 5" above another bar. Is this what you've done and I just can't see it yet? It took me a while to figure out your picture with a sphere. I'm debating adding "steps" to the vertical part of mine .. not sure how to describe it, but I'll mock it up and see if he likes it; will send a picture when I can. I'll try to take pictures of where I'm at currently. By the way; found small screws that work beautifully with the slip-t connections .. just put one screw in and the T's are fixed to the bars.

What's the inside diameter of the smaller pieces? They appear to be the 3/4" size -- just about 1" inside diameter? That's not too small for a sturdy playgym! That's as large as I'd use, myself. My grey, Gandalf, really wouldn't like much larger than that.

Looks Great! It's similar to my other two perches that I built but convenient in that it's so small. Definitely useful for carrying birds around. I'm curious, you refer to "fids" .. do you have two or more? Do they get along on such a small perch? Having only one myself I have no clue how multiple birds would interact.

Update: Haven't gotten to the store for more pipe yet, but Gandalf has gotten MUCH more comfortable with the stand as it's currently designed. I just had him in the kitchen with me while I made tomato soup for the nephew and ate lunch; Gandalf moved all around the playstand and seemed to love it. I gave Gandalf a nut and he sat there eating while we were enjoying our soup .. he loves eating when I'm eating. I'm headed out today to get two more pieces of pipe .. it's a bit of a trip to get up to the store; with the price of gas I try not to go that far unless I have more than one thing to purchase.

Later: I measured everything quickly when the pipe came in, I was so frustrated. In answer to questions from broomer I just measured it more carefully. The pipe that is labelled 3/4 CPVC is actually about 7/8 OD and a hair under 3/4 ID (about 5/8") The new pipe that I just purchased from Lowe's (labelled 3/4" PVC) is actually about 1/16th over 1" OD, and is about 1/32nd over 3/4" ID.<br><br>Post edited by: n2fisher, at: 2008/08/06 09:07

And a third one ... enjoying the (current) top of the stand.

Here's another picture:

Well, I posted elsewhere that I just had a learning experience. I've built two playstands with 3/4" PVC pipe and fittings, or what I assumed were such. In the conversations with Mika's parent and Broomer, we've researched various sites to come up with inexpensive fittings. Well, the slip-T fittings came in today. They were much too large; my 3/4" pipe went into it with lots of slack. The inside diameter appeared to be an inch. The outside diameter of the pipe is 3/4 of an inch. I called the company, explained the situation, and they very nicely said they would ship another set of 30 Slip-T fittings out; they shipped today. Next, I headed to Lowe's tonight to pick up the pipe and misc fittings that I would need. Imagine my surprise when I walked into the plumbing aisle and found PVC pipe labelled 3/4" that was actually 1" in outside diameter -- it turns out that standard PVC, the diameter refers to INSIDE diameter, not outside. The inside is 3/4", the outside is about an inch. My pipe at home is labelled 3/4" as well, but it is CPVC, and the 3/4" refers to outside diameter, NOT inside diameter. Well, after stumbling around considering options for a while (realizing that my web-order slip-T fittings re-shipped today is also going to be the 1" diameter ..), I went ahead and purchased some extra fittings and pipe for 3/4" PVC (1" outside diameter). Turns out the fittings are MUCH cheaper than CPVC fittings; I paid $2.50 for 10 90 degree fittings, as well as T fittings. $15 got me out of there with two 10-foot pipes and several handfuls of fittings. Came home .. looked at Mika's playstand again, and started cutting pipe. CONCERN: Gandalf didn't appear to like the thickness of the pipe initially. It's very hard for him to get his beak around the pipe, so moving from level to level may be difficult. After considering dimensions for a while and experimenting a bit, I cut four 35" vertical pipes, 2 12" and two 14" cross bars. Ooops, bad planning. I'm out of pipe now. Guess I'll head back tomorrow to pick up some more. Anyway, I put them together, wrapped a bit of vetrap around it to keep the Slip-T's from slipping down the pipe, and tried it out. Gandalf wasn't VERY pleased with it, but he seemed happy. It was a bit wobbly; will be better when I put screws in for the SlipT's and get more crossbars cut and installed. He DID like the amount of moving around he could do (all my previous stands were two vertical pieces and one horizontal). He DID like the different levels, but had to be coaxed to move between them. I had to cut down the size greatly; there's no way he could reach 4" up and 6" across to move from one bar to the next with the bars so thick. You can hopefully see from the pic that my top cross-bar is moved almost all the way to one side. I will have to cut the 12" side down greatly. Here's one pic: <br><br>Post edited by: n2fisher, at: 2008/08/06 08:47