Aviary `Re-scaping'

It’s been a busy time over the past week with some major re-perching happening around the aviaries as well as an overdue re-substrating of the Macaw flight. I have a preference for `Decomposed Granite’ as an aviary flooring. It’s earthy in colour and texture, compacts hard, drains well, easy to surface rake and maintain and is perfectly safe for birds. Our only problem up here is limited supply and relatively high cost. The alternative, and one that I have used for many years (and many other aviculturists), is crusher dust. It has many of the same qualities as decomposed granite but in its normal form is a blue-grey colour and isn’t as aesthetically natural looking as decomposed granite. Needing to go with whatever was available I ordered a couple of cubic metres of crusher dust to be delivered and much to my surprise was greeted with a sensational looking `red’ variety.  It looks fantastic in the aviaries and is just the same as regular crusher dust but its source material is a different type of rock. The images below show the difference. The top image is the new aviary flooring with the red variety and the bottom image is another aviary with the regular blue variety.

Macaw flight with `red' variation of crusher dust for aviary floor

Amazon flight with normal `blue' colour crusher dust for aviary floor