My wife was owned by an African Grey parrot for 32 years until she passed away. I got involved when we got together 16 years ago. I knew nothing about parrots and their needs at the start (or how clever they are)

I did lots of research and learned what things were safe etc. As our bird became a geriatric (our vets words) it became clear that her existing cage wasn’t going to be suitable for her as she started to get wobbly from arthritis.

Buying what we needed was impossible as most parrot cages were too high internally so too much room to be hurt from a fall. Smaller cages were only really suitable for smaller birds like cockatiels and wouldn’t’ stand up to a large parrots beak.  She might have had balance problems but there was nothing wrong with her beak!

The only option was to make my own. Coming from an engineering background and being experienced in stainless steel, aluminium and titanium fabrication I was sure I could make a better one than I could buy. That turned out to be true and a new stainless steel  cage with less internal height was made. This was successful. As time progressed she got worse and we were still concerned about her hurting herself if she fell. We had a camera on her so we knew she still fell occasionally. So I then modified that cage so that it wasn’t quite so tall internally. That worked well until she passed away.

The research that I did about cage materials was interesting. The more I looked at them and the design the more I realised most are made by companies who don’t have much idea of what is best for a bird. The materials used may be toxic for a bird.

Heavy metal toxicity is of course extremely dangerous and can be fatal.

It is often thought that powder coating is completely safe. However  if a bird chews on the cage and manages to chip or peel the powder coating the real danger is what lies beneath. 

If the underlying metal is made of zinc or galvanised steel, ingesting those flakes or exposing the metal can lead to severe heavy metal poisoning.

Zinc is also dangerous so galvanised metal cages are not the right thing to use either.

After taking all this into account I decided that stainless steel was the only way.

It is also of course the most expensive but parrots are expensive too. Some of the bigger ones live a long time and that is another reason stainless is a good investment,