Cage design warning

[charliebrown]

If you have a cage with the disks that spin to open the doors for your parrots food bowls please take extra precautions to make sure your bird can not open those doors. We never thought our bird would be able to open one of them on his own. Sadly Charlie learned how to open them and escaped from his cage while we were at work. Please I beg you don't let our personal tragedy be repeated and make sure your cages are completely bird proof as well as the room your bird spends it's time in.

Thanks,
Heather and Patrick

 

[Spiritbird]

King cages are made that way. Gosh I thought they were so nice and easy to use. Thanks for this input.

 

[merlinsmom13]

Are you talking about small balls that turn to open the cage doors?

 

[vedwed]

Some H.Q. cages are like that as well, but I have only one, and my conure cant get the little discs flipped up on his own. Seems the screws are made intentionally loose so you have to hold the disc while opening the door. That is like a built in safety, if you have to hold the disc, cant open and climb out from the inside.
try to put an extra few washers on the screw to make a tight one looser if needed, has always worked for me in the past.
And thanks for the heads up on those doors

 

[vedwed]

Are you talking about small balls that turn to open the cage doors?

Like these little discs

 

[charliebrown]

Yes, those are the disk I'm talking about. They spin freely so they aren't supposed to be able to get out of the cage because they can't hold the disk and push the door open. Charlie escaped through the door that held his water bowl. We aren't sure how he did it but we checked the cage and everything was working correctly. So please be careful, all it takes is for them to get out once.

 

[charliebrown]

I won't say human error wasnt involved, obviously it was otherwise Charlie would still be with us. I will say, however, that I work for a vets office and one of my responsibilities is ensuring animals are secured properly and safely in their cages. And that Charlie knew how to open all the doors on his cage from the outside. He played with them all the time. Does this mean he learned to open them from the inside? I think its logical to assume he could have learned to do so. But accidents do happen and we will never know for sure exactly what happened that day.

Furthermore, I do believe the cage design to be safe for most birds, but I warn people to not under estimate the learning abilities of your parrots they are smarter than I thought they could be before owning one. And no matter how safe the cage is, accidents can and do happen so please take the time and the effort to make sure the area your bird lives in is as safe as it possibly can be.

All I ask is that people learn from what happened to Charlie and protect their birds from the same fate.

Thanks

 

[mygirl]

i have a cage with those doors, but while we are talking about safety the top of mylahs is arched and in one of the joins her toenail got caught in it, lucky we were home, i believe that your bird did let itself out, i think those latches are a stupid thing to have on bird cages we never ever leave mylah outside alone in her cage, another thing people with these design cages need to be aware of, she can move the grate in the bottom and if she ever works out how to move the poop tray she will be able to get out through the bottom.