Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ncar!noao!arizona!swituc!pmb
From: pmb@swituc.UUCP (Pat Berry)
Newsgroups: rec.birds
Subject: Re: Cages - Quality at a price?
Summary: many Mexican cages poor quality
Keywords: cages, birds, parrots
Message-ID: <184@swituc.UUCP>
Date: 30 Jul 89 06:32:45 GMT
References: <6606@cloud9.Stratus.COM>
Followup-To: rec.birds
Lines: 26

In article <6606@cloud9.Stratus.COM>, mm@cloud9.Stratus.COM (Mike Mahler) writes:
>     better rates.  Has anyone any good/bad experiences with ordering
>     a cage by mail order?

We recently purchased a Macaw cage and did a lot of shopping before
doing so.  When shopping for a cage, pay very close attention to the
guage of wire used, the spacing of the bars and the quality of the
welds.  Most of the "cheap" cages we saw were from Mexico and all of
these were made with anywhere from 1/8" to 3/16" diameter wire.  I
could easily bend the wire with my fingers... imagine what a Macaw
or Amazon could do!  The welds were porous and there was a great deal
of slag on many of the welds (read this razor sharp spikes).  The bars 
were so fr apart I was worried the bird would spread the bars enough
to get its head stuck. 

In other words, I would not recommend buying a cage mail order unless
you have some means of verifying the quality prior to the purchase.

We ended up having a wrought iron shop make a custom cage for very
little more than the "cheap" Mexican cages and we could not be
happier with it.

-- 
Pat Berry KN7B
pmb%swituc.uucp@arizona.edu
KN7B @ WB7TLS.AZ packet radio