Today I won a cockatiel and cage at the local bird club's monthly raffle. (Don't worry, they do the raffles in a way that birds only go to people who really want to have them). The cage is nice and big but has one major design flaw: circular decorative bars on top of the functional vertical bars, which create some spots with nasty claw-catching V-shapes. I even saw my new baby get stuck once before the raffle and helped him get free.

Now that he's home I've got him in a safer but much smaller cage until his quarantine is up and he can join the other tiels in the really big cage. But I'd like to rehabilitate this cage if I can. I tried wrapping some hemp string in the bad spots to fill them up but wasn't satisfied with the tightness of the string - getting a claw caught in string instead of in wire isn't going to help anything. Can anybody recommend other alternatives? The decorative wire seems to be welded on and I don't think I can get it off. Here's a picture of the decorations and the cage as a whole:

Is that tape holding together a broken weld?
Are there sharp edges?
That would be a concern to me, an aweful nice cage, alittle solder and some touch up paint, I wouldn't trust the tape, maybe someone you know could solder that for you.
Beautiful Tiel, Beautiful cage, shame its broken, but really worth fixing.
Con Grads on winning.
I pray you both have a wonderful relationship.

BW

How about nylon rope? Would that work? You may have to eventually replace it, as your baby may find it fun to chew.

Congrats on your new fid!

Is it possible to pop the welds and take those circular pieces off?

On my play cages I cut my own washers, using clear acrylic, to hold perches. What if you were to design a toy with an acrylic piece the size of those circles as it's base and bolt/wing nut it to that area.

Maybe try and hang toys in front of that area of the cage on both sides, thus blocking him from climbing around the circles? The rope seems to be doing a good job, maybe use Paulie Rope instead, to prevent toes getting caught?

I have that same cage and have never had a problem with it. Mine doesn't really climb the bars though, he goes from perch to perch instead, and also has toys hanging in that area of the cage.

Like Arty said, nice looking cage!

MY opinion: Take the cage to a welding shop for any broken welds, they might do the welds for free. I would not use solder anywhere on the cage as solder contains lead and zinc, which is toxic to birds. If you do any painting make sure it is paint for childrens toys, non-toxic.

There's nothing broken on the cage - what you see in the picture is a bit of hemp string that I put on to try to fill in the claw-catching spots. The spots that are the most unsafe are too narrow for Paulie rope or I would have used that. As it is, I could barely pass a thin piece of hemp string through the space. There's an identical spot on the opposite side of the circle that isn't covered with string. It's just the right size to catch a cockatiel's toenail and no good for anything else.

I'm thinking of looking at craft stores and hardware stores for some plastic that's thin enough to cut easily and thick enough to be tiel-resistant. I could cut disks of the right size and cover the circles with them. Attaching some toys is a good idea and I may go with that.

Installing the disks and running a perch between them would probably be even better, except that he likes to play on the swing and putting a perch there would mess that up.

Thank you everyone for your suggestions!

Could you simply take a pair of wire clippers, cut the circular decoration off, and then sand down any sharp edges?

What if you bought or tried to make something like this 'side mount' toy? You could add all kinds of little toys to it.
http://www.greyfeathertoys.com/cgi-b...&affiliate_id=