I’ve had my two diamond doves for a while now, I’m by no means an expert but this is what I’ve picked up on.
My doves get a LOT of flight time, because the house was basically bird proofed for a much more active and adventurous bird, the doves are mostly happy to just sit and stare out of the window or on top of their lamp (metal casing gets warm) or the radiator anyway. Because they like to have a home base to go to (and tbh stick around most of the day) they put themselves to bed in the evenings in their own cage. If you want to introduce yours to free flight time, I suggest leaving them in the cage for a while so they know that’s their safe place to sleep/eat/etc (I think it was a few weeks for my two) then let them out in the room their cage is in for a while before letting them explore elsewhere. You may need to remind them that their home is the Cage not the highest spot in the room they can find. They used to try to roost on my shelves/top of the door frame until they got the hang of the idea that their bed is the cage.
Mine have an Arcadia UVA/B lamp over their cage because our house is very prone to being dark, even in the height of summer. And because it’s also cold/damp they have access to various heat sources in the house. They did have a heat pad in their cage they used to sit on (and that’s still accessible outside of the cage now) but they prefer to sit on the radiators or on top of their lamp because it’s higher up.
I was previously feeding them mixed finch/budgie seeds, some hemp seeds and mixed greens chopped up very very fine (spinach, dark lettuce, kale and rocket usually) but the last time I spoke to my vet he ended up querying it with the Bristol Zoo avian specialist, who said they kept theirs on all of the above, plus finch pellets which I need to look into, I’ve been struggling to find pellets small enough for them.
(It was about 60% seed, 30% pellets, rest greens if I remember correctly, and some fine grit).
You will want to keep their water shielded, they make getting poop and debris into it an Olympic Sport, the cover I use is actually the lid off their nest box. You can use just about anything for a nest box, but make sure it’s secured well, canary ones for instance tend to droop from the weight and they over compensate with Lots Of Nesting Material.
They have a fairly standard metal cage-mounted bowl, and I think it’s a bit deep for them. Little Man will tend to lean into it, but Eva will just climb right on in, they both throw food on the floor but as they’re ground foragers that’s not unexpected. Since I moved a smaller perch next to the bowl, I’ve found they prefer to stand on that and lean in, I think it’s a bit easier on their feet, and they’ve stopped shoving each other out of the way now, they can both eat at the same time.
We have a paper shredder which provides all the nesting material they might want, and we replace their real eggs with fakes and let them sit. They have a modified finch nest box which they seem happy enough with, but again took some persuading to get Eva to stop trying to build her nest in the cage doors.
