Bird Cage Selection: How Big and Where to Buy?

Check out bird books and magazines and you’ll run into the same advice over and over—”Buy the biggest cage you can afford.” Big cages give your bird more space to play, fly, and climb, but they help you out, too. A bird in a good-sized cage is going to mean less mess for you than one in a small cage.

A big-enough cage gives you the freedom to position perches so they aren’t near food and water dishes or over each other, which keeps everything cleaner. Big cages also have more space for the droppings and spilled food to land on the floor of the cage - instead of the floor of your living room.

Many people put birds in cages that are just plain way too small. The bird droppings and spilled food build up fast if you put a cockatiel in a cage that is, say, sixteen inches square and twenty inches high. Lots of cages that are sold in perfectly respectable pet stores are too small for any bird, or at least too small for the bird they are being advertised for. If you see a “cockatiel” cage, it’s likely that it would be more suitable for one parakeet—even though that “cockatiel” cage might cost eighty bucks!

The problem with bigger cages is that bird cages can be very expensive, but there are way to get around that. I wouldn’t recommend ever buying your bird cage at one of the big chain pet stores. Discount stores, although possibly cheaper, aren’t ideal either because the cage quality and selection is not as good. You’re not going to find a three-by-four foot flight cage at Wal-Mart. More on where to buy your cage in a minute.

The two size considerations you need to pay attention to in bird cages are the interior space, of course, and also the bar spacing. You might want to buy your cockatiel a giant cage, but if you’re not careful to pay attention to bar spacing, you may end up with bars he can stick his head between (not safe) or with a very expensive cage that was designed to house a large parrot. In a lot of big cages, the bars are heavy-duty, which you don’t need if you have a smaller bird that doesn’t chew hard.