# Dealing with Dampness in outside aviary



## Birdmom4ever (Jan 14, 2003)

Speaking of weather, does anyone have any ideas for dealing with dampness? You guys in Canada where there is "real" weather will probably think I'm a wuss, but the constant rain is a problem for my pigeons. 

We have two enclosures. The loft, a proper pigeon loft, stays nice and dry inside when I close the window. The aviary is another story. It's built between the north side of the house and a solid redwood fence (it was originally our nighttime goose pen). Both ends are wire. Last fall I covered the east end in plastic, which helps with drafts and keeps rain from blowing in. There's plastic corrugated roofing, but when it rains heavily the water runs down the roof to the fence, making the fence and the area at the base of it very wet. All the nest boxes are attached to the house, and they stay dry. So does most of the (dirt) floor. But we have v-perches along the fence. I use mixed pine and cedar shavings as litter and change it once a week, so the pigeons are not directly on damp dirt. The pigeons all have dry places to roost. But it is very damp out there. 

Normally this set up works fine. The pen is about 15' x 5' so there is lots of flying space and it's not crowded. The fence side gets wet in heavy rain, but we usually have dry-out periods between storms. The problem is that we've had rain almost daily (sometimes 24 hours at a time) for the last six weeks and it's supposed to continue for at least another two weeks. So the aviary doesn't have a chance to dry out. 

I've already had one pigeon with a "one-eye" cold. I nipped it in the bud with antibiotics, but I'm afraid of having an outbreak. I recently treated them prophylactically for trich and coccidiosis because I was worried about cocci with all the dampness. Any ideas? I've far too many pigeons too put them all in the loft--it's full. I just ordered some Doxy-T in case.


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## Maggie-NC (Jun 22, 2005)

Cathy, could you dig a trench where the water is running and put one of the plastic drain pipes in to carry the water to an area away from the aviary part?

Although our bigger aviary is about 15 feet from the house it is near the corner of the house where the downspout is. This caused a run off that headed directly to the aviary. My husband dug a long trench and put in the black plastic pipe and that moved the run off in a different direction and bypassed both aviaries.


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## Lin Hansen (Jan 9, 2004)

Birdmom4ever said:


> There's plastic corrugated roofing, but when it rains heavily the water runs down the roof to the fence, making the fence and the area at the base of it very wet.


Would it be possible to install a gutter along the roofline with a downspout to direct the water away from the base of the fence? Like what you see on people's homes? Just a thought.....

Linda


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## Birdmom4ever (Jan 14, 2003)

Maggie and Linda, that might work. I'm thinking some kind of diverter where the aviary roof meets the fence that could drain it off the end. We would also like to pour a concrete pad for a floor and use floor grates on top of it so I can keep it cleaner. But my hubby already has a long to-do list and not a lot of time. 

I'm attaching some pictures so you can see how it's situated. In the first picture you can see the wall of our house on the right and the edge of the loft sunroom on the left. Guess I should have started a new thread!


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## Birdmom4ever (Jan 14, 2003)

Here are a couple more.


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## TerriB (Nov 16, 2003)

I see what you mean. It sure would be nice to block the rain from going down the fence so the birds on those perches aren't sleeping near the damp wood. It seems like we're always having to adjust/adapt our pigeons' quarters!


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## Pigeonpal2002 (Jul 27, 2002)

Hi Cathy, 

I was just looking at your pictures. Is there any way you could insulate the fence side...either by covering it up with a sheet of plastic or maybe even styrofoam? This would help prevent the wet and damp from getting in that side.

Another suggestion would be to cover all sides with clear plastic and put a space heater in there sometimes (for a bit) to help dry things out faster.


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## armin369 (Jan 7, 2006)

Please Dont let water on wood that is close to birds because thats what happened to me and my pigeons got paratyphoid and it took me a while to get them better. so try to fix that as soon as possible


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## Camrron (Dec 19, 2005)

*Moisture in the Aviary*

This is a tough call. I will start by addressing your location. Your Aviary is on the North side of the building. From that perspective alone it is the area least likely to get good sun and the area most likely to stay moist and damp throughout the year. Second, you are using plastic on one wall. Plastic has a terrible habit of condensing moisture and naturally enough the condensing effect is on the inside (windless and slightly warmer side) of the plastic . You have likely noticed water beads on the plastic and possibly also water condensing on the underside of your corrugated plastic roof. Third, the wooden fencing is absorbing and holding moisture during rains and slowly releasing that moisture during times that the weather is warm. Fourth, an earthen floor, depending on the mixture in the soil of sand, humus and clay can be a real wetness trap.

You will want to address:

1) drainage from the roof so that the fence does not get wet anymore. An overhang will help this. If your neighbor agrees it is the way to go. Your excess water will go onto his property if a overhang is used. Or.....

2) Gutters on the roof of your aviary plus a downspout to direct the water away from the floor and walls of your aviary.

3) floor drainage. If concrete is out of the question then remove the top layer of dirt (soil) and substitute sand ensuring that any incoming water can be drained away to somewhere else. As long as it is not remaining in your aviary. You can then overlay a wooden floor over the sand base. The sand is just to ensure proper drainage, not necessarily a place for pigeons to be living on top of.

4) get rid of the plastic. Instead use wood for the East wall. You may also want to consider replacing your fibreglass ceiling with a wooden and shingled ceiling. The corrugated fibreglass also condenses moisture from within the room and can create a constant and unrelenting dampness problem.

5) good airflow and ventilation will remediate some of the dampness. The downside for the birds is that it will mean they are then living in a drafty environmement and we already know that is not a good thing. To reduce interior moisture you could..........

5) As Brad mentioned, introduce some heat into the environment to help dry things out. You won't need all that much heat if you follow steps 1-4 but....

6) A better idea is to relocate the aviary to the sunny side of the house and forget the North side of the building all together. Location, location, location.
There are a lot of problems, moisture-wise, with your current setup. You may want to reconsider the idea of trying to remedy them all and instead just move the whole aviary to a sunnier site. Otherwise you will have to address all of the issues of roof drainage, floor drainage, condensation, wet wood and airflow all at one time for this plan to work.

I hope this helps you just a bit.

Cameron


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## feralpigeon (Feb 14, 2005)

Hi Birdmom4ever,

I would be concerned about the pine shavings on the ground close to the house in terms of attracting termites, even if swapped out weekly. Gutters/downspouts to direct the water away would be a good idea. You can buy vinyl sleeves at Home Depot that will fit on the end of the downspouts and direct the water even further away & lay on top of the ground if you don't want to dig a trench and lay pipe. 

I'm assuming that you would like to do something right away that would help,
and then take further steps down the road, so a heat source would be the quickest way to dry the area out for now, and then over the spring/summer think about the floor and roof. Think I'd do a concrete floor w/wood roof & composite shingles. Plastic does tend to collect condensation, much the same way that glass windows will collect beads of sweat on the inside of the house if the heat isn't turned on to dry things out. 

Yikes, two more weeks....it's really driving folks nuts around here.

fp


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## Birdmom4ever (Jan 14, 2003)

Thanks for all the suggestions, guys. Yes, I know it's a bad location, but there's no room on the south side of the house. The loft next to the aviary faces south, as it should. But there isn't room anywhere else in our yard for another loft or aviary. 

As to roofing, it's very hard to work on because you can't walk on the aviary roof and even installing the corrugated plastic was a challenge. We don't want a solid roof on it anyway because it would make it very, very dark. Might consider making the east end wood if we could put in a window. I plan to remove the plastic at the end when the weather turns mild again so they get morning sun. They get a little western sun from the other end even in winter during the late afternoon, so I'm reluctant to cover that part. They get lots of sun from that side spring through fall. 

Overall, the health of the pigeons in the aviary has been equal to those in the loft. I keep everything as clean as possible, disinfect waterers daily, etc. We vaccinate regularly for PMV and Salmonella/paratyphoid and I treat them 3 or 4 times a year for canker, coccidiosis and worms. It's kind of ironic, but I think back to my first pigeons I had as a teenager and we had a lovely but improper aviary, dirt floor, severe weather (it was in the mountains), lots of dampness, overcrowding and chickens living in the bottom of it. I had those pigeons for five years, never medicated and never had a sick bird. Go figure. 

Thank God we got a break in the rain yesterday afternoon which is still holding for now, but we're expecting more by tomorrow night.


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## brotherstwoloft (Jan 25, 2004)

hi, maybe this would be some help. first you'll need tempary supports for the roof you can use 2x4s and put one under each rafter of the roof. you'll need to cut at least 6 inches off the roof rafters, now build a new wall so that the fence is not part of the loft. build the 2x4 wall on the floor inside the loft, use pressure treated ,make shure the hight is about 1 inch shorter than the other side. from where your nest boxes are, attach the gutters to the top of the outside wall and let the roof rafters sit on top of the wall. by attaching the gutter to the wall before you put it into place you don't have to worry about climbing on the roof. then place tar paper on the outside of 3/8 plywood so when you attach it to the wall studs the side facing the fence will be protected, now with such a sturdy wall you can mount perches or nest boxes. building the wall in this manner will give you water drainage a sturdy wall and you don,t have to climb on the roof. hope that this is some help good luck


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## pigeonkid1046 (Nov 16, 2005)

Suggestion.......could you go to your local hardware store and getting some water proofer? I don't know how you do things, but it isn't good on pigeons to have a constant draft blowing on them like in your avery. My grandpa lost a pigeon due to having a draft blowing on it all the time, and another one almost slipped away.


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## Birdmom4ever (Jan 14, 2003)

brotherstwoloft said:


> hi, maybe this would be some help. first you'll need tempary supports for the roof you can use 2x4s and put one under each rafter of the roof. you'll need to cut at least 6 inches off the roof rafters, now build a new wall so that the fence is not part of the loft.


That thought has occurred to me too, and might be the best way to keep them dry. After all, everything up to the fence stays nice and dry. It's just where the water runs down the fence and at the base of it that it gets wet. It would also be nice to not have the fence forming one wall of the loft. 

Drafts are really not a problem because it's located between our house and the neighbors' so it's sheltered. We've had pigeons out there for five years.


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## brotherstwoloft (Jan 25, 2004)

hi birdmom, i was thinking of another way of keeping the birds dry. if you dug a trench along side the fence deep enough to put a 6 inch plastic pipe with holes drilled in it and pitch it in the dirrection you want then as the water drips down the fense it will enter pipe and travel away from the loft. it's like a gutter but in the ground. you'll still have to build the new wall.


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## Camrron (Dec 19, 2005)

Hey Cathy,

This is my best idea ever except I did not post it until now (or the other day perhaps, maybe as you will probably already know.)

You should get little raincoats for your birds, and rubber booties too. And hankies in case they catch a cold. Just my thoughts for the moment. We talked about it already. I think hankies are in line...for sure!

*Lot's of hankies!*

In case they get runny noses and the drips and all that stuff from the runoff!

Cameron


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## Birdmom4ever (Jan 14, 2003)

I can just see my fantails toddling around with bright yellow raincoats and little boots!


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