Jharmon

If you are a new bird-owner, you may find yourself facing a rather tedious chore when cleaning your pet’s cage. There are so many bars, cracks and dirty surfaces that you may be overwhelmed with the task. However, if you set a daily routine, it will be easier to keep the cage shining and your bird healthy. After all, good hygiene is the key to keeping it happy and vital.

Now that you know how important it is not to postpone the job for tomorrow, you need to learn how to break down the routine to simple tasks that could be done daily, weekly and monthly. First of all, you need to know that there are inevitable chores that have to be completed on a daily basis:

1. Changing the cage liner – if you wonder why is it so important to change the papers of the cage regularly, just ask yourself how you’d feel if you were walking over discharged food and droppings for a few days. In addition, the dirty papers will start to smell badly pretty soon.

2. Cleaning the water and food dishes – as with the cage liner, this will prevent bacteria to develop and harm your bird. This will only take you a few minutes, so there is no reason to avoid the chore. All you need is some mild dish detergent and running water. Deep cleaning services advise you to rinse the dishes carefully before returning them back in the cage.

3. Wiping all surfaces – if you do it every day, it will be easy to keep everything clean. Use a damp rag or a paper towel and go through everything you see, don’t skip the toys, bars and perches. No matter how much effort you put in it, there could always be some hard-to-rinse spots. For them you will have to use a cleaning solution.

Next you need to choose one day of the week when you are going to do a more thorough cleaning. Remember that you are doing this for your pet’s sake and otherwise it’s just as if you are inviting bacteria to infest it’s home:

1. Remove and wash the tray – it is where the cage liner is secured. The same rules as with the water and food dishes apply to it.

2. Clean the perches – they accumulate a lot of dirt and are potential breeding ground for bacteria, so you need to pay special attention to them. Not only you have to wash them, but it is also advisable that you soak them in hot water and cleaning detergent first.

3. Clean and rotate the toys – cleaning the toys means that you ought to soak them and rinse them carefully. In addition, you should rotate them and switch their position every week so that your little baby wouldn’t get bored.

Last but not least, once a month you need to do a thorough cleaning of the whole cage. Cleaning services London advise you to strip the cage of all the extras and, if it’s not too big, to put it in the bath tub. However, if it’s made for a larger bird, it won’t fit in it. Then you could take it outside, in the yard or at the balcony and use a water hose to clean it. Do whatever you deem wise, just don’t forget to clean every last bit of the cage.

After having read all of this, you may feel that it is quite a tiresome job, but if you keep your daily schedule, you will find out that you only need a few minutes every day to ensure that the cage is fresh, tidy and germ-free.

Tags: bird cage, birds, cleaning bird cage, cleaning solutions, pets

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 10th, 2012 at 9:22 pm and is filed under Keeping Pets. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.