New Rainbow Lorikeet

[Wolf]

Perhaps if you were to draw a brief sketch of the layout, so that we can see how it fits together. While you are thinking about that, lets try looking at the traffic pattern in the home. Where do you spend most of your time? Where do you spend the least amount of time? Now look from the various places that you think of as a good place for the cage and what can you see? This is important because birds are highly visual creatures. Let us suppose that you spend the most time in the living room which is off of the kitchen, but there is not a good spot in the living room for the cage and the kitchen is out go to the places that you think might be good and see what you can see.
I live in a ranch style house, which includes a sun room. The sun room would seem to be the best place for the birds. It has two outside doors and is right off of the kitchen and although it receives a lot of traffic going outside or coming inside no one spends much time in this room. It is the coldest room in the winter as they built it on the north side of the house. The room that we spend most of our time in is just off of the kitchen exactly opposite of the sun room and is the only other suitable place for the cages and it is far from ideal.
The sun room is where I want the birds to be as soon as I can fix the various issues, such as additional heat during the winter and adding at least one entryway to the room from the most used outside door so that there is a buffer for when we come and go from outside to prevent the birds from getting out. Even with that it is not an ideal location because of its access to the kitchen through the opening that used to be sliding glass doors. the kitchen is also the dining room and is completely open into the kitchen proper. I may be able to design a pair of permanent room dividers to section off the kitchen and then hang a screen it is a major project and I face a lot of opposition to doing this.
My point in this is that there may not be an ideal location as most homes were not designed with companion birds in mind. You may need to prioritize the most important things about the locations available to you and then work from there. To help with my birds lighting needs I use floor lamps with full spectrum bulbs made especially for birds, not the ones for reptiles because they will injure my birds and maybe even kill them. If you use full spectrum bulbs you must make sure that they are for birds with a CRI of 94 and up with a K Temp of 5000 to 5500 with a UVA and UVB output of no more than 2.
There are things that you can do to make a less than ideal space work for your bird, such as the full spectrum lights, also taking the birds outside in a small cage near dawn and dusk or in a shady place during the day, these all improve the quality of life for your bird, but the thing that relieves the most stress on your bird is being able to spend time with you and this does mean on you as well. If your bird only uses the cage for sleeping and for meals you can get by with the cage being in a different room much more easily than if the bird is in the cage very much of the time.

[Pajarita]

OR you can have two cages. Lots of people do that, one large cage for during the day in the room where there is people all the time and one small sleeping cage in a room where nobody is for sleeping after dusk..

[Gabriel]

I mostly spend my time in my bedroom and living room, and probably spend the least time in the guest room. I think the most suitable place would be the hallway in front of my bedroom, but I am still not sure.

[Gabriel]

Another thing - my sister is also about to purchase a pair of parakeet sometime this week or next. Will this affect my rainbow, and will I have to place my cage in a different room from hers?

[Wolf]

I have four different species of parrots in the same room, ranging from a 1 oz. parrotlet to a 16 oz. Amazon. I do have to keep my Grey off of the parrotlets cage to protect her toes and am very protective of the parrotlet when the others are out at the same time as the parrotlet is. The parrotlet is usually the actual aggressor in most cases but it is ok.
I don't know how a lorikeet will get along with other birds as I don't have one.
lorikeets are close to the size of my Senegal, but I don't know how aggressive they are. I had a pair of budgies for a while that I was helping a friend with and the Senegal was somewhat fascinated by them as they constantly babbled to each other. But I never had any issues with them. Anytime that there are birds nearby there will be an effect and I would say for the most part it should not be detrimental to a single bird as it is still someone that they can talk to other than human.

[Gabriel]

I have seen quite a few sites and have also been told personally that lorikeets tend to be aggressive when it comes to other birds, so that's why I am quite unsure. I would like to post a sketch of the layout of my house, how can I do that?

[Wolf]

If you can scan it in and save the file as a jpeg file you should be able to post it as a picture on the forum. To do that you scroll down the reply screen to where you see add attachments , click on that tab, browse your computer to the file and upload it.
You could take a photo of your sketch and save it to your computer and upload to post it as described above.
if nothing else works PM me and I will give you my email address and you can email me the file and I will try to post it for you. Pdf's will not post no matter what I do.

[Pajarita]

If they are all young and grow up together, there should not be any problems. But even when they are introduced to each other as adults and there is aggression at the beginning, they usually end up either ignoring each other or accepting the other bird as part of the same flock.

[Gabriel]

I'll try to post a picture sometime today. Pajarita - I am still waiting until the rainbow weans, which is 10-12 weeks from now. However, my sister is purchasing a pair of around 4 week old parakeets from a breeder.

[Gabriel]

Here's a layout of my house. <---> are internal walls, and ----- are internal doors.