hiriki
Well-known member
- Oct 19, 2014
- 536
- 737
- Parrots
- (Birdie - Jenday Conure)
(Kiwi - Green Cheek Conure)
(Elby - Lovebird)
(Gorou - Ringneck Dove)
I mostly spot-clean--the liners on top of the grates in my cages are changed daily or every other day (if I skip a day because it doesn't look dirty, I at least pick up and toss the discarded food). I also have liners below the grate in the tray, which I change... less often. There's almost never any poop in the tray liners, since the top liner catches the poop, so it's mostly just bits of toy or seed husks that fell off of the top liner when I was rolling it up to take it out. Water and veggie dishes are washed daily. Dry food dishes (seeds/pellets) aren't washed daily, I know this is maybe not best practice but I mostly only wash these if they get poop in them.
Now, where I know I have weaknesses is in the perch cleaning process... I mostly just strategically place perches so that they don't get poop on them at all, but if I misjudge and put a perch in the wrong place and it gets poop on it, it's usually a while before I notice and clean it, and at that point the perch needs a deep clean because the location has been bad the whole time and my bird has been pooping on it for a while. I have a few right now waiting to be deep cleaned because I'm not really sure how. And because I don't do daily poop scrubbing for perches, I mostly don't bother to inspect them closely at all, and I noticed recently that a lot of perches have some veggie crumbs on them. Oops! I also noticed that the bracket for my lovebird's veggie bowl has some veggies kind of wedged between the cage bars... ugh. I have a ton of extras so I just replaced the bracket with a new one and the dirty one will go through the dishwasher...
So here's my question I guess:
Now, where I know I have weaknesses is in the perch cleaning process... I mostly just strategically place perches so that they don't get poop on them at all, but if I misjudge and put a perch in the wrong place and it gets poop on it, it's usually a while before I notice and clean it, and at that point the perch needs a deep clean because the location has been bad the whole time and my bird has been pooping on it for a while. I have a few right now waiting to be deep cleaned because I'm not really sure how. And because I don't do daily poop scrubbing for perches, I mostly don't bother to inspect them closely at all, and I noticed recently that a lot of perches have some veggie crumbs on them. Oops! I also noticed that the bracket for my lovebird's veggie bowl has some veggies kind of wedged between the cage bars... ugh. I have a ton of extras so I just replaced the bracket with a new one and the dirty one will go through the dishwasher...
So here's my question I guess:
- What's your perch/cage bar cleaning process? How often do you do it and what do you use? Do you have a different process for different perch types? I do have rope perches, as well as natural sisal rope perch alternatives, and I have no idea how those would be cleaned.
- How often do you deep clean and what does your deep clean look like? Both for the cage bars themselves, and for the accessories (toys, etc). What cleaning products do you use, how do you dry everything...