Best 8 Cages For Macaw: Big Bird, Big Personality, Big Cage

Most people associate owning birds with macaws. Macaws are a breed of parrot you’re most likely to recognize as a parrot so it’s likely that you’re either already a proud owner of one or are thinking about getting one.

A big part of a happy bird’s life is its living quarters and macaws are no exception. At first, it might seem like any cage can work well for macaws as long as it’s not too small but too many factors can make or break a safe cage for macaws.

The Summary

Do Macaws Need A Cage?

Yes, Macaws do need a cage probably more than other birds do. It needs to be tall enough so that its tail doesn’t touch the bottom which would lead to its tail ending up broken or bent. As much as they need a tall cage, they need a wide and lengthy cage. Macaws require the biggest cage out of all bird species out there.

Macaw Sizes And Breeds

Macaws are a species of parrot but macaws also have other breeds that differ in feather colors and their overall size. You can separate them into two categories: Mini Macaws and Large Macaws

Mini Macaws – They are classed as mini macaws if they’re less than 20-in long (head to the end of the tail). They include the Red Bellied Macaw, Severe Macaw, Iliger’s Macaw, Blue-Headed Macaw, Yellow Collared Macaw, And Hahn’s Macaw

Large Macaws – Since mini macaws are under 20-in long, the large ones are over 20-in long. The biggest macaw is the Hyacinth Macaw and the ones smaller than them are Red-And-Green Macaws, Great Green Macaws, Blue, And Gold Macaws, Hybrid Macaws, Blue Throated Macaws, Scarlet Macaws, Lear’s Macaws, Military Macaws, Spix Macaws, and Red Fronted Macaws.

Can I House Two Macaws Together?

As their describe as being highly social and sensitive to loneliness, you might think that it’s a great idea to get a second macaw so they never get lonely. This causes more trouble than good though as the cage has to get bigger and they’re likely to fight, especially if you’re housing a male and male and a female and female together.

Can You House Macaws With Other Birds?

Any bird smaller than your macaw will get bullied by the macaw. Housing birds of different species is only reserved for smaller birds such as cockatiels, budgies, and lovebirds.

Cage Types Suitable For Macaws

Although flight cages might be too small for them, an aviary can enrich your macaw’s life easily. There are many suitable cages fit for housing macaws, each having its own special purpose.
Aviary – Aviaries are large, deep, wide, and tall enclosures meant to help your bird meet its daily exercise needs inside. They are usually meant for outdoor use, especially if it’s a huge macaw aviary.
Flight Cage – You’ll rarely, if ever, find a flight cage meant to house macaws. They are extremely wide and not very deep and help birds meet some of their daily exercise needs inside. Macaws need wide cages as much as they need deep cages so these are simply going to be inadequate for housing them.
Indoor Cage – Since cages suitable for macaws have to be huge, you can only follow the minimum cage size guidelines provided to give them a suitable home that’ll fit inside your own home. Anything bigger can easily be considered one of the above lsited cage types. No matter the cage you house your macaw in, they should still be let out.

Macaw Cage Benefits

Suitable Space For The Bird

Macaw cages are the only ones that provide them with adequate living space. What this means is that there is less of a chance your bird will get depressed and suffer from what’s likely to be feather plucking.

Durable Bars

These birds have extremely strong beaks that can easily break or bend metal. Macaw cages are the only ones made with wire thick enough to not let it happen. The things that bent or broken bars can lead to are escape and serious, head, leg, and wing injuries.

Double Function

If you’re choosing to get a doule macaw cage, it might as well function as an aviary for themm as well. Aviaries are meant to give your bird eough space for it to meet its daily exercise needs there.

Macaw Cage Issues

Price

More materials spent means that the cages are likely to be expensive. Not only that, but the cage has to have a certain build quality to it that certainly can’t come from cheap cages. Expect a cage that’s at least $700 or more.

Huge Size

This wouldn’t be a problem if many people didn’t have adequate space to even place the cage inside their homes. You don’t want your cage to be half the size of your living room for example. A type of solution is to get a corner cage but again, you shouldn’t be cheap when it comes to providing your macaw with a cage of proper size.

Weight

Wheels can help with moving macaw cages but you’re likely to be pushing a cage that’s at least 100 lbs or even more. The only way to reposition a macaw cage in a different room is to fully disassemble it which is an issue on its own if the cage doesn’t come with proper assembly instructions.

Important Cage Properties: Macaw Edition

Cage Materials

Macaws have strong, big beaks that can easily bend or even break cheaper materials (yes, that includes metals). An aluminum or stainless cage would be best followed by wrought iron cages, alloy steel cages, and only then iron cages. Remember, thickness also matters. We would advise against wood bird cages since they’re likely to be made out of softwood (macaws will tear it apart in no time).

Finishes: Rust, Corrosion, Toxicity

Cheap finishes will never be a challenge for a macaw to chip away and expose bare metal parts. The problem with this is the fact that rust and corrosion are toxic to birds if ingested (not a problem with stainless steel and aluminum cages). Some metals are toxic as it is.

What Size Cage Does A Macaw Need

As you were able to see, macaws are very different in size so their cage needs are very different. For the most common species of mini macaws, a good cage would be at least 34-in wide, 24-in deep, and 36-in tall. For the most popular large macaw species, a good cage would be at least 36-in wide, 48-in deep, and 60-in tall although bigger is always better.

What Is The Preferred Wire Spacing For Macaws?

If there’s one thing you can’t go wrong with it’s the wire spacing of macaw cages since they have to have the largest wire spacing of them all. Mini macaws can be housed in cages with 0.75” – 1” bar spacing while larger macaws can be housed in cages that have a 1”-1.5” bar spacing although you’ll rarely find a commercial cage with a 1.5” wire spacing.

Wire Thickness

The second most important wire factor is the thickness of the wire. The thicker the wire the better although we’d recommend a bar thickness of at least 4-5 mm. 6 would be even better if you can opt for it. Mini macaws can have a smaller wire thickness but not by a lot.

Stuff To Put Inside The Cage

Textures, color, moving parts, and more are all things that you should care about when providing the cage with toys and extras. Perches of different diameters are a must and you should put toys inside as well. Make sure you rotate everything frequently because otherwise, your macaw will get bored.

Cage Cleaning

Daily cleaning is required for food bowls, litter tray, and sometimes toys and perches as well. Weekly, extensive cage cleaning should be done. The number one priority is to disinfect everything.

Best 8 Cages For Macaw

We tried as hard as we can that will satisfy your macaw’s needs for a big cage while also saving you space. We also took into account the weight of a cage, their prices, how safe they are for macaws, and which ones.

A&e Corner Bird Cage

The cage is incredibly wide, nonetheless, you can place it in corners since it has an irregular pentagon shape. It even comes with seed guards near the bottom that’ll keep your floors cleaner when it comes to seed scattering.

The front has 3 panels, the center one features the main entrance while the side panels feature 2 feeding doors each. It comes with 2 perches and a total of 4 stainless steel bowls. It does sit on wheels and it’s relatively light compared to its size.

Buy On Amazon

King’s Cages Slip 4030 Bird Cage

The front door is so big it’ll almost let you fully step inside this cage. It has 2 cleaning trays, one for the bottom and for the top where a play top is located. It consists of a perch, 2 bowls, and a play ladder.

The side walls hold a total of 3 feeding doors with safety locks. They pair with 3 additional bowls and you can place another perch inside it. The wheels are durable since they aren’t made out of plastic but they can’t be locked.

Buy On Amazon

Prevue Pet Products Silverado Bird Cage

The macaw cage is probably more stylish than others since it features a victorian style top which does add height to the inside for longer macaws. Unfortunately, the size is perfect for larger macaws but the wire thickness doesn’t allow for housing them.

The seed guard corners are rounded so that you don’t hurt yourself trying to remove them. The wheels are metal-made but can’t be locked. It comes with a single perch and 2 side feeding entrances and bowls for either food or water.

Buy On Amazon

Prevue Pet Stainless Steel Bird Cage

Even though the wire is only 3.7 mm thick it shouldn’t worry you since it is a cage made for housing mini macaws. Even so, it’s still a few inches smaller than the recommended size. With plenty of out-of-cage time, it shouldn’t pose a problem.

To motivate you to let your bird hang outside the cage, it comes with a play top consisting of a perch, 2 bowls, and a play ladder. All accessories including the ones inside the cage are also made out of stainless steel. The wheels are metal and can all be locked for stability.

Buy On Amazon

Flyline Flight Bird Cage

When you look at its width and length, you’ll quickly realize that it’s a perfectly square cage that allows you to place it in corners. It’s fairly cheap for what you get but note that the price might affect its construction quality.

The bars make it suitable for both large and mini macaws but the size prohibits it to house larger ones. It does not feature seed guards but does sit on 4 wheels for easier moving. It comes with 2 perches and 3 bowls you can place on the feeding doors.

Buy On Amazon

King’s Cages Slt 6432 Bird Cage

The main feature of this cage is its removable divider that everything else is built around. When you put it this way, it makes sense that the front features 2 off-center large doors. At the top of each door, there is a vertical opening door that can act as a rest spot.

It’s made for housing 2 macaws but if you want to do this, make sure you take your time introducing the macaws to each other cause there’s a high chance they’ll fight. It sits on 6 wheels, has seed guards, and is colored white. Each cage side features 2 bowls and a perch.

Buy On Amazon

Mcage White Bird Cage

A decent price doesn’t explain the durable wrought iron construction of this cage. It’s protected from premature rusting and corrosion with an egg-shell white powder coat which will also make it easier for you to notice any imperfection in the cage.

The play top sits on 2 arched play ladders and features a perch and 2 stainless steel bowls. It also has a cleaning tray. The front door extends from the bottom to the top of the cage so getting access to the inside will be easy.

Buy On Amazon

Can I Travel With My Macaw?

You certainly can travel with your macaw but they’ll need an extremely long travel cage which can be hard to find. The reason why they need it is that a too short cage can lead to the bird’s tail feathers ending up bento or even broken.

Penzonny Display Acrylic Bird Cage

You might be weirded out by the price of this cage but it’ll make a lot more sense when we tell you it’s made for traveling purposes only. It’s usually hard to find a travel carrier this long which is important for macaws since they can end up with bent tail feathers otherwise.

The acrylic material is 1/4” thick and features ventilation holes all around. You can use the holes to place a perch inside it. When it’s not in use, you can disassemble it for convenient storage. It comes with 2 nylon handles for easy carrying.

Buy On Amazon

Things Potential Macaw Owners Should Know

Described as loud and stubborn, macaws are not a good choice for the first-time bird owner. Here are some issues that potential owners should be aware of.

Is Macaw A Good First Bird

Think of owning macaws as literally being a parent to an adolescent child. They’re extremely inteligent and often challenge their owners by being disobedient, doing things their own way, etc. As a big and unpredictable bird, they’re really not for first time bird owners that won’t know how to handle the upcoming issues. What this may lead to is an unhappy, impossible to manage bird that you might want to take to a shelter in the end.

Which Macaw Breed Is Best For Beginners?

No macaw is good for a beginner but the ones that will be easier to manage since they have calmer personalitites are the green-winged, blue and gold, blue throated, and the hyacinth macaw(all considered large macaws).

Lifespan

Although lifespan depends on the breed of macaw, they live somewhere around 35-50 years so it is lifelong investment money and time-wise. The oldest pet macaw was reported to live 112 years.

Behavior

Macaws will limit test you all the time. For example, they’ll lunge at you just to see how far they can push it. Other times, it’s seen as playful behavior and sometimes as aggression. They chew extensively, bite to ”discipline us” and so much more but they are motivated by food so this is one way to approach training them.

Time Investment

Apart from the fact that they live for quite some time, another issue you’ll face is that you have to keep interacting with them daily. If not, they’ll get bored and start wreaking havoc. Daily out-of-cage time is also a must and once you’ve tamed your macaw, you have to keep them tame.

Money Investment

Even if you don’t count in the price of the macaw itself, the cage price, and if you can, the price of the aviary, macaws are expensive birds to take care of. From veterinary bills to food, toys, and replacement parts. You’ll be spending up to 100 dollars a month on them only.

Common Problems Owners Face

Do Macaws Poop Everywhere?

Although smaller birds poop more than larger ones, you’re looking at 15-20 daily poops with macaws. Since macaws are food motivated, you can potty train them using this knowledge. The alternative would be to get a bird diaper but you’ll want t watch out for if it’s the right fit, if the material is too harsh, and you will have to clean them after discarding the diaper.

Do Macaw Bites Hurt?

They have the most painful bite out of any bird. Their curved and strong beaks tend to tear and puncture the skin with ease. On average, you’re looking at a bite force of 500-700 psi while the biggest members can have a bite force of 2000 psi. This is why it’s important to properly train these birds.

Puberty

Macaws will go through puberty later than other birds. You can expect this to happen at the age of 3-7. During this time they become quite stubborn and hormonal. To prevent a full-blown puberty tantrum, your macaw baby should be properly trained by then.

How Do You Make A Macaw Cage?

Making something on your own is a grateful process mainly because it lowers the costs by a lot and a cool DIY project to occupy your mind is also nice. We would tread carefully with making cages for macaws and we’d recommend that you don’t waste any money on cheaper materials either.

You’ll be building from the bottom up and the things you’ll need for this cage are 4 x 10′ shiplap boards for the base, a spacer, drywall screws, foam insulation boards, and an x-acto knife, corner braces, and a metal dog outdoor kennel.

1. Cut 2 shiplap boards into 47 and 1/8 inches (make the side base panels), and for the front and back pieces cut the boards into 69 and 1/2 inches.
2. Take your spacer and place it in between the boards utilize a 6-1 1/4 drywall screw and secure the boars together with a 10-in apart between each screw. (stain them before you put them together).
3. Take a foam insulation board and cut it down to 66 and 5/8-in by 47-in. To cut it, use the x-acto knife
4. Get your corner braces and screw them into the corners to secure the base further
5. Take whatever came with the dog kennel. Secure the walls most likely using bolt screws and other metal pieces.
6. Secure the roof using zip ties between the walls and ceiling