Fully Cleaning Your Parrot's Cage

[Brittanyv326]

A brilliant suggestion from Parrots for Dummies was to use Grapefruit Seed Extract (GSE) it is natural, disinfectant, and non toxic to birds. One drop per ounce of water. She suggests to use it on everything and to even put a few drops in the water bowl. It can be found in health food stores or on this site:
http://www.allhealthtrends.com/citricidal.html

Until I can get my hands on some of this, I'm using the Poop Off and the vinegar/water solution. I'm picking up my Senegal tomorrow (I put a deposit down today, needed more time to get prepared) and thoroughly cleaning the cage tonight.

[Rue]

Thank you for the recipe! It's always good to have proportions on hand when you mix stuff together...

...and I love the scent of fresh lemons...so clean smelling!

[yummycookie19]

A couple friends of mine and my own use this cleaner recipe found on the link below.

http://birds.about.com/od/birdcages/a/h ... leaner.htm

It does the job quite well especially after using the spray steamer to soften the poop and dirt.

Hope this helps.

[izmail1215]

I have to clean the papper daily or 2 times a day! Oh thats nothing I also have to change the water atleast 6 times a day. my amazon loves to throw stuff in his water bowl. I clean the cage 2 times a week with water only but thanks for the tips.

[snakesentwined]

I have to say that the little steam cleaner we bought has been the best $70 I've spent in a loooong while! No more icky vinegar or diluted bleach smell or expensive poop cleaners!

Wow - that's a fantastic idea!! thanks

[skeetersunconure]

im scared of using bleach and I really do not like the smell of vineagar but before I got skeeter when I was researching I found a disenfectant cleaning solution thats all natural you mix •

3 cups hot water
3 tbsp Baking Soda
2 tbsp pure Lemon Juice
do you think that this can be used as an effectice disenfectant??

[entrancedbymyGCC]

I don't get these baking soda/lemon juice mixes... mostly the acid juice will neutralize the alkaline baking soda, so you get some fizzing and it may foam or fizz but it is fairly pointless except for show. It won't be an effective disinfectant, but maybe you just need to get the cage clean. Soap and water is pretty effective up to a point. But if you really want to disinfect the cage, use bleach or a commercial cage disinfectant and wait the appropriate amount of time before you put the bird back. And be very careful using disinfectants on porous surfaces like wood, as they will tend to soak in and leach out over time. Better to use mild soap and water on these and toss them if you suspect they are really contaminated (or bake them out if they can take the temperature).

Garden variety steam cleaners can't be relied upon to thoroughly disinfect cages either. The expensive ones that produce superheated steam are more likely to do so. They will clean, and they probably kill a fair number of the beasties, but if you have a need to make the cage [img]sterile[/img], don't count on them. You'd have to work pretty hard to get the surfaces hot enough to rely on the steam disinfection. (When you boil bottles to sterilze them, you do it for several minutes and they are immersed in boiling water -- regular steam cleaners produce steam at the same temp as boiling water, so you'd have to hold it a comparable period of time to be comparably effective.)

[Kyle]

You can also try a Bosch high pressure water sprayer.

[javelin]

I took an old baby toothbrush (actually has a rattle at the end) and scrub the cage bars with it wet with plain water. I scrub the perches too. Then let the morning sun dry things out. I do full cleaning about once a week but I do change the paper for the bottom tray almost daily and sometimes even twice a day.

The water/vinegar mix sounds like a good idea for tough cleans. Will try it out sometime.

[entrancedbymyGCC]

You can also try a Bosch high pressure water sprayer.

If you can take it outside easily! The nice thing about a steam cleaner, is that you can use it in the room the cage stays in. Scooter's cage isn't too hard to take outside, but Scotty's is a real pain with eh geometry of our hallways, so it is nice to be able to clean it without taking it out.