Posted by Mitch Rezman on 3/2/2013 to Bird Cage Information

Talk to a person on the phone Mon - Thur 10 - 5 Fridays 10 - 4 All times CST
Email info@WindyCityParrot.com 24/7 for Bird Care and Pre or Post Sales Questions

Birds in the wild crack nuts and eat fruit dropping seeds to the ground. Season after season new trees and shrubs grow around the canopy trees the birds are living in. A bird eats a fish ready to lay eggs in a large lake in Illinois in the fall. The bird flies to Indiana and poops the fish eggs out in a half acre man-made lake on a farm in Indiana. The next spring the farmer is miraculously fishing on his own private lake. Now I want you to walkover your cage look your bird in the eye and say "hey, this is not the rain forest, trees will never sprout from the floor, fish will never propagate in your water dish, could you stop flinging your seeds and pooping in your water dish now?"

what do you mean other people don't spend their weekend scrubbing berry stained from the wall and ceiling? And where is this magical place?

That's the best way I know how to teach your bird to not be so messy. Wait, that didn't work? Wow, I'm sorry but thank you for playing. Much like taking a winged animal that would normally cover, via flight 5 to 10,000 acres a day, restrict them to a few hundred square feet then we're surprised the animal exhibits behavior problems. Your bird doesn't give a parakeets fart you installed your own kitchen floor plank by plank in a weeklong project from Home Depot. So I'll say this once "BIRDS ARE MESSY!" Now let's deal with it shall we?

There are three legs of the "Mess Equation." Cleaning the cage, cleaning the area around the cage (or where the bird travels in your home) and cleaning the bird. To keep things short were going to focus on cleaning the cage today Great offense starts with a good defense so we want to take steps that will help protect the cage in the areas around it and they make it easier to clean.


Office chair mat from Staples	Sheet linoleum from Home Depot

You can protect any floor from the droppings under any bird cage with an office chair mat or sheet linoleum. Linoleum is cheaper but you can usually get it cut to fit almost any size cage and is cheap enough or you can keep an extra piece in storage. Office chair mats are pricier but you can choose them based upon the type of floor you have and they can also be quite easily used to protect walls behind and on the sides of the cage.

Newspaper can be a bird keeper's best friend. It's safe for your birds, it's plentiful and cheap. Is primarily used in the tray of the birdcage. Some people with smaller cages will stack a number of sheets cut the size of the case tray so I can just remove a layer or two daily. Were not big fans of bedding, regardless of material because we feel it holds bacteria and moisture which promotes mold. Because of the birds respiratory system the last thing we want is your bird to be near mold. If you want to take birdcage sanitation to the next level check out T3 anti-microbial birdcage liner from Prevue Pet T3 Cage Liner utilizes a patented process developed by Agion^®. The liner is an anti-microbial protected paper, treated on one side to inhibit the growth of odor-causing bacteria.

If you're not already try putting a folded piece newspaper top of the grate of the birdcage to help keep it clean because it's far away the dirtiest part of the cage. Put the newspaper under her food dish perhaps something heavier and ceramic and you're solving two problems. With the food on the floor of the cage is halfway up the cage wall much more waste will go into the tray below than on to the floor. Whether you have a dome atop or a play top cage if your bird towards the top of it why not throw a piece of newspaper on the tray of play top or directly over the dome top, and you'll be scrubbing less metal

People use a lot of products to clean their bird cages. The list is pretty long. Here's what dozens of Facebook fans had to say when they were asked. What do you use to clean your bird cage? A couple of unique but inexpensive products that have become top sellers our website are the Tidy-seed feeders and birdcage door skirts both pictured above. To wrap things up for the day, would like to recommend an essential accessory no birdcage should be one without and that's a Lixit bird water bottle. I know this comes as a shock but sometimes birds will dunk their food into their water dish and even poop into the water bowl. The food particulate isn't too bad but you don't want your bird drinking water holding bacteria created from feces. Lixit water bottles simply solve this problem.

Do you have your own ideas, suggestions or questions about birdcage cleaning? Please post your comments below.

Featured bird video of the week