quality of a room. Several can make it downright unbreathable. (Feather dust is not a problem when a bird is in his natural environment outside, but inside your home, it’s another story.) The level of dust you’re willing to tolerate is a matter of personal preference, of course, but if you’re living with one or more dusty birds, we recommend an air filter. You and your birds will breathe better for your decision, and you can look forward to a reduction in your home’s dusting requirements. Get an air filter that generates a good amount of air turnover for the room you’ll be using it in, and place it near the source of the dust — the bird’s cage.
Cleaning Up
Birds are messy, we admit. They destroy toys, they fling food, and they spread old feathers and dust wherever they go. Keeping things clean isn’t all that hard, though, with a plan and the right tools.
Stocking up on cleaning supplies
For your own sanity and for your bird’s health, you need to stock up on basic cleaning supplies. Here’s your shopping list:
Brushes: Assemble an array of brushes with plastic bristles to clean fecal matter off perches, toys, dishes, and cage bars. If your bird drinks from a bottle, you also need a bottle brush. Make sure the brushes you buy can be run through the dishwasher’s sanitize setting.
Cleaners and disinfectants: Plain old soap and water go a long way here and won’t cost you very much. For disinfecting, use ½ cup of ordinary bleach to one gallon of water. Do your cleaning away from your bird, of course, and make sure to rinse and air-dry anything you clean before reintroducing items to her living space. Although scented cleaners may smell good to you, avoid strongly perfumed products such as those with pine oils. They can damage your bird’s delicate respiratory membranes.
Dishwasher: If you don’t have one of these kitchen helpers, bringing a bird into your life and home is a great excuse to invest in a dishwasher. Sure, you can hand-wash in hot, soapy water, but running dishes, perches, toys, and cage grates and skirts through the hottest dishwasher cycle gets them cleaner more easily. For rope toys, your washing machine is a lifesaver, too.
Handheld vacuum: Great for snarfing up pellets, dust, feathers, shells, seeds … and everything else. You gotta have one.
Preventing messes in the first place
Whatever lands on something you can throw away or wash out is one more battle with mess you can win easily. Newspapers and towels are your main weapons in this war.
Newspaper can line the cage (see the nearby sidebar “All the news that fits the cage”) or cover the floor. You can also purchase rolls of butcher paper, packing paper, painter’s paper, or newsprint, all available from online or big-box retailers. Avoid anything coated or printed with colored ink. (Plastic mats and dog crate trays are good floor coverings beneath the cage, too.)
Some people prefer to use small-animal bedding under the bottom cage grate, and that’s fine. Skip wood shavings and chips, though, and go for bedding made of shredded paper or cardboard. (Care Fresh is one brand we know and recommend.) Wood shavings and chips are dustier and can irritate your bird’s airways, especially in the case of aromatic woods such as pine and cedar. Also, remember that one advantage of having newspaper on the bottom of the cage is just that: You can see the mess, which can help you remember to clean it more frequently. Absorbent materials such as shredded paper, wood chips, or other things look less messy and may not prompt you to clean as often as you should.
Towels provide good footing and mess prevention for any areas your bird may explore — and cleanup is as easy as throwing the towels in the wash. Watch for frayed or worn spots that can catch toes, feet, or heads. Towels are also great for covering your clothing when your bird is in a snuggly mood.
Towels are also an important tool to help you restrain your bird for grooming or when he’s sick. To learn how to “towel” your bird, see Chapter 7.
ALL THE NEWS THAT FITS THE CAGE
How common are newspapers as poop catchers? So common that many cages are designed to fit the standardized size of an American or Canadian newspaper. (The standardization came about because of advertisers, not bird lovers, of course!)
Newspapers are great cage liners. You’re likely to hear some fuss and bother about black ink posing some risks to birds, but we’ve never seen a problem, and we know of no study to validate that a threat actually exists. Newspaper inks are mostly soy-based, and although they may rub off on your bird (and your hands while you read the paper), they don’t present any health issues that we can cite. We recommend plain old black-and-white pages — no color ink, and no glossy paper. (Colors and gloss add chemicals your bird doesn’t need to be dealing with.)
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