My first show of this season (South East Ipswich on Oct 18th) is fast creeping up on me, so had a day off work last week & managed to find some time to make a bit of a start on the show cages.

The first job was to simply get the ones out that needed cleaning and assess their condition.
I ended up painting the majority of these inside & out - but well worth the end result

This stack of 8 are just being cleaned up ready for inspection.

The cage fronts are all removed & have been cleaned & then any that required it, sprayed with black enamel paint

I do have a few other cages, but these are ready decorated & in a clean condition, so do not require much work for this season



Now all that remains is to fit them out for the various birds

I will show in a few days how to set out the cage for the larger birds

It's amazing how much work you guys need to put in to show the softbills this way, also the amount of room you need..

But at the end of the day you must be please if your hard work returns the favour with a rosette for yours and the bird’s effort

nice one Robb

Had a good weekend & managed to get a few bits done with the show cages.
Now have 5 cages kitted out ready for either Blackbirds or Thrushes.

These are quite straightforward.

I like to use "hurdle" type perches & these are made from any suitably straight branches, ideally dried wood.

I cut a sheet of 6mm ply so that it fits snugly inside the show cage. This is used as a false floor, so that it can be removed for cleaning & nothing is actually fixed to the cage.
I then mark out the ply ready for the hurdles, I have found that a distance of 10" between hurdles seems to be about right & then the legs for each need to be about 5" apart.

The height of the perch is set so that the perch is about level with the bottom of the cage front.

On these, the perches are 8" long & the height of legs is 3"

Being made of natural branches it does not have to be perfect - but it certainly works.

It is just simply all srewed in place & job done !!