Perch cleaning question

[HarryC]

Harry has been with me 2 1/2 months now. We do daily hand training sessions but we are not beyond having my whole hand just inside a food dish door. He get frantic when I get more invasive with things like removing or installing perches.
He has eight perches he uses all the time. I try to arrange them so they don't get too pooped upon but poop happens. I made a tool on a stick to break loose poop that lands on them but the white residue remains.

How often do you think I need to remove a perch and give it a good wipe down? I want to keep things healthy in his house without freaking him out too much.

 

[ChristaNL]

I am a lazy person by nature, so I sometime drape a wet rag over the poopiest places to soften the goo up first (just water is enough) - makes for far easier stain-removal.


Not sure if your bird is ready for it (mine live to demolish my cleaning equipment anyway), but it really helps.

 

[HarryC]

Along that line I was thinking about taping a piece of rag to my poopstick aka chopstick and do a wet spot wipe on the stains.

 

[chris-md]

You call that lazy Christa? I’ll fill a tub up a few inches just to soak a small perch!

 

[EllenD]

LOL!!

Using a wire-brush or an actual "perch scraper" tool once a week when you clean the entire cage to remove any dry poop, then give it a scrubbing/disinfecting would be more than enough...

Can I make a quick suggestion about your training? All parrots are extremely territorial about their cages, some more than others, and some of them no matter how tame they are (even hand-raised/fed and cuddly/handleable) will NEVER like it when their owners, who they are closely-bonded to, put their hands inside of their cages...So one of the reasons you probably aren't advancing much in your hand-taming is because you're trying to do it while he's inside of his cage and by putting your hands in his cage...That's been his only "Safe-Space" since you brought him home, and in reality it could be 2 years from now and he could be extremely hand-tame by then, and he STILL will probably react the same way to your hands in or on his cage...So when you're trying to work with him, all he's concerned about is that your hands are inside of his territory, and he wants them out, and he's not going to get much out of the taming/training at all if you keep doing it that way.

Instead, it's best if you take him to a room with a door that latches, no windows or cover the windows so he doesn't fly into them, let him out of his cage in the room (best to have some type of portable-perch or stand for him to perch on, or something else that looks like an obvious perch for him), also best if it's a carpeted floor but not totally necessary, and then REMOVE HIS CAGE FROM THE ROOM so he can't see it anymore. Then do you taming/training sessions with him this way...And then when you get him to the point where he is willingly stepping-up onto your finger, what you want to do from that point on is to simply open up his cage door and try to get him to come out on his own, and THEN put your finger out and tell him to "step-up" while he's on the cage-door...Some hand-tamed birds will step-up onto a finger of their owner while inside of their cages too, but some just have to always be allowed to come out on their own...Either way, the hand-taming/training process is going to be a lot more productive and also quicker if he's not only focuses and concentrating on you being in his territory, or getting back to his territory if it's within his sight while you're trying to work with him.

 

[HarryC]

Thanks for your input but now I'm confused because everything I've read and videos I've watched strongly suggest your bird be hand trained or handheld perch trained before letting him out of the cage. I guess I'm afraid of what might happen with Harry having free flight without me having any control over him.

 

[ChristaNL]

He will take of sometime anyway
birds love to fly.
As long as here is no mortal fear of hands you will get there.

 

[EllenD]

I have hand-tamed literally dozens and dozens of parent-raised, non-tame Budgies throughout my life, along with other parent-raised, non-tame species of parrots, and I can't tell you how much horrible and just plain WRONG advice on training/taming and bringing home a new bird there is out there, especially on the internet and on sites like YouTube...A few of the most horrible pieces of advice include:

-When you bring home a new baby bird, don't pay any attention to it at all and just leave it alone for at least a week or two, if not longer, so it can "settle in" to it's new home...(HORRIBLE ADVICE)

-When you bring home a new baby bird, don't let it out of it's cage at all for at least a few weeks to a month, because it needs to settle-in

And what you just wrote, "Don't ever take your new bird out of it's cage until after it's already stepping-up for you and is a bit hand-tamed" is probably the worst piece of advice I've seen, simply because each bird is an individual and totally different than the next, and you have no idea how territorial they are going to be about their cage...So if you were to keep trying to hand-tame your Budgie and get him to step-up for you while still inside his cage, and to not allow him out of his cage UNTIL AFTER he's already stepping-up and hand-tamed, THAT MAY MEAN THAT YOUR POOR BUDGIE WON'T BE ALLOWED ANY OUT-OF-CAGE-TIME FOR WEEKS TO MONTHS TO EVEN OVER A YEAR!

Obviously that's ridiculous, or at least it should sound ridiculous to you, because you can't bring home a new baby parrot and not allow it to come out of it's cage at all for potentially months and months! It's not healthy for the bird, neither physically or psychologically, and it's not going to get you anwhere with his hand-taming or training at all, because obviously he is at least a little territorial about his cage...So it's a "Catch-22", because "You can't take your new Budgie out of his cage until he's already hand-tamed and stepping-up for you, but he'll never become hand-tamed nor step-up for you while he's inside of his cage because he's too focused on your hands being inside of it."

*****There was a new member here a couple of months ago, I believe they wrote this post I'm remembering in January or December, that is a great example of what I'm talking about...This new member had a Cockatiel, and they were posting because they thought that something might be wrong with it, I think it was a hurt foot or something like that...But when we asked him to post some photos of their Cockatiel, they stated that their Cockatiel, who was 4 years-old at this point and who they had originally brought home as a young baby under a year-old, HAD NEVER ONCE BEEN OUT OF IT'S CAGE because they weren't ever able to hand-tame him or get him to step-up while trying to work with him inside of his cage, so they couldn't take photos of him and didn't want to take him to an Avian Vet because he had never once been out of his cage in the entire 4 years they'd had him!!! This is exactly what can happen if you approach hand-taming/training a young baby parrot who was parent-raised and not ever handled by people by not allowing it to come out of it's cage until AFTER it's hand-tamed and already stepping-up for you, the bird will never become hand-tamed nor be stepping-up, so the bird never comes out of it's cage!!! And you don't want that...

***Step #1 to hand-taming a parent-raised parrot is ALWAYS going to be EARNING THE BIRD'S TRUST, because the bird will not ever step-up for you or allow you to handled him/touch him if he doesn't trust you...Right now the only thing that he trusts is being inside of that cage, his "safe-space". So, there are a couple of different ways that you can approach this situation, but all of them are going to involve you allowing him to come out of his cage in a safe room with a shut-door, and then removing his cage from the room so that it's totally out of his sight and he can't go back to it...

The easiest and quickest way to hand-tame a parent-raised, non-tame Budgie, is to have his wings clipped with a CONSERVATIVE CLIP that will completely grow-out allowing the Budgie to fully fly again in about 2 months or so; this gives you about 2 months to take advantage of, to spend time every single day working with him, so that in about 2 months when his wings grow back in fully and he can fly again, he'll already not only be stepping-up for you every time you simply put your finger down against his lower belly for him, but he will also fully trust you and allow you to handle him, and want to hang-out with you outside of his cage without constantly flying away from you.

A lot of people are totally against clipping a bird's wings, but in this case, it doesn't matter either way whether your Budgie's wings are clipped or not because he's not coming out of his cage at all and flying anyway! So why not have his wings clipped conservatively, giving you 2 months to get him out of his cage every single day for a good amount of time? He isn't flying anyway as things are, and I can guarantee you with 99% confidence that if you do clip his wings conservatively and you commit yourself to getting him out of his cage every single day and working with him one-on-one, that by the time his wings grow back-in in about 2 months you'll have earned his trust fully, and you'll be able to handle him, have him step-up, have him liking/wanting to sit on your shoulder and to just be with you whenever possible, etc. Now you still will need to remove his cage from his sight when you first start working with him, because he will still be wanting to get back to it constantly, but the difference is he won't be flying away from you continuallly, with you chasing him all over the place...

I highly recommend you give the wing-clipping a try, like I said, in this situation, you're not taking the ability to fly away from your bird because he's not being taken out of his cage at all anyway, and it's only going to be a very temporary, 2-month period that should be extremely productive for you and will allow him to actually BE ALLOWED TO FLY when the wings grow back in, because he won't be flying away from you constantly, you'll have earned his trust, bonded with him, have him stepping-up for you regularly, and also hopefully have him Recall-Trained so that he wants to come to you whenever he's out of his cage...You just have to make sure that you tell whomever clips his wings (Avian/Exotic Vet, Bird Breeder, or even a bird-shop/pet shop employee/owner who you're sure knows what they're doing) that you Only want them to clip the outermost 5-6 Primary Flight-Feathers on BOTH wings. That's it, and this is totally painless, and if you make sure you request this then he'll be flying again in about 2 months as a hand-tamed bird.

 

[HarryC]

Another Catch 22. Wild bird can be more easily trained if his wings are clipped and he is out of the cage for training but he won't leave his cage to go to the vet or daily training sessions because he is not trained.
Not that I disagree with you. I'm trying to envision the process and it ain't a pretty picture for Harry or myself.

 

[dhraiden]

How often to remove perches for cleaning?


About once a month, certainly. I used to do this once a week. I now wipe them down (still affixed within the cage) once or twice a week, with a sponge like this one.

 

[HarryC]

Thanks, dhraiden, for the tip on my original topic.