Keeping the floor clean

[jason]

Hello everybody!

I have a housemate who owns a parrot. The parrot has a huge cage in the living room, and we set up a perch in the foyer. It is a very small house, so these seem the only places available.

Anyway, my question is this - is it normal to have the floor constantly full of poop and food? I mean, we put newspapers down, but it is disgusting. The papers are cleaned up about once every two or three days, but still, I do not know if this is normal. I do not know any other bird owners. I, personally, find it gross.

Is there another way? Or is it just taken as a given, that if one owns a parrot, they will have poop and food on their floors?

thanks!

Jason

[entrancedbymyGCC]

Well, parrots do poop... but it should for the most part being caught by the cage tray or whatever the perch has that is meant to catch debris. Some food will get scattered outside that, but if you run a had vac every day or so, change the paper daily and wipe off the perches and cage trays regularly with poop off or similar, it shouldn't need to be disgusting. If the cage doesn't have a seed skirt, adding one may help quite a bit. What kind of bird is it?

A bird adds to the challenge of housekeeping, but housekeeping is housekeeping IMO.

However, this is a parrot forum, not a roomate-management forum...

[Brittanyv326]

Sadie makes such a mess of her food and takes baths sometimes which soaks in all the food into the carpet. Our solution was just to get a rug so that she wouldn't ruin the carpet since we rent. It's not a big deal for the floor to be a wreck where her cage is, since it's in a spare bedroom that no one uses, her and the dog have it all to themselves with their cages, toys, and all kinds of stuff. We just run the vacuum over it. Her playstand is in the main room, so it's more important to keep that area clean, plus it's where I give her fresh food, so she makes more of a mess shaking it and throwing it. Like entranced said, it's all about the seed catcher really, and the one on her stand is huge, so we just have to mostly clean the tray and catcher. The floor is only really covered with feathers... But again, our dog comes in again here... she's our insta-vacuum of the food that's thrown, other than the grapes which dogs can't have. Now I'm off track again!

Anyway, yeah messes come with owning birds, but seed catchers are REALLY nice to have on your stands/cages and they really cut down on the mess!

[jason]

Thank you for your replies!

We do NOT have a seed catcher around the perimeter of the cage - she got the cage a decade ago, on the cheap, and that part was missing. Also, the bird likes to sit on the door, when it is extended. And we feed it when it is in the foyer, on the bar. So, I do see how it is "our fault" for the mess, I am just curious about Parrot Owner Culture.

I am just curious on how much of a mess parrot owners put up with. Do you have a pile of poop and food on the floor overnight? Or do you clean it up every single day? do you let your bird perch over the floor and eat and hang out, or do you make sure to always keep him/her always over a cage floor?

Just curious.

[lotus15]

Parrots are very messy... but I am a neat freak. I vacuum every day and do small spot vacuums multiple times a day with the hand vac. I am constantly picking up after them. I change the cage newspaper liners 2-4 times a day, sometimes more. My place definitely does NOT have poop and food all over. And I don't have seed catchers either; I think they get in the way. As for feeding, my birds get most of their meals in the cage, but they get treats out of the cage as well.

[Brittanyv326]

I am just curious on how much of a mess parrot owners put up with. Do you have a pile of poop and food on the floor overnight? Or do you clean it up every single day? do you let your bird perch over the floor and eat and hang out, or do you make sure to always keep him/her always over a cage floor?

Just curious.

Sadie used to hang out on her cage door and we did the newspaper on the floor thing, but I got tired of tthat really quick! What a mess! I wish I was really good about cleaning it, but really I kind of let the mess on the floor build up a bit. I do change the newspaper and clean perches more often though. She is always on her stand or cage unless we are hanging out, at that point I catch the poop with my hand or clothes hahah and the food too.

[zazanomore]

You should see the mess my budgies make.

[jason]

I would love to hear more stories and responses. Thank you so much everybody!

I have set the goal for myself of "creating" a mechanism to solve this problem.

And you know what? I am going to take pictures and share it with you all. However, it may take several weeks, as I first need to buy the materials, and then put it together.

[entrancedbymyGCC]

In our house each bird has a cage with a seed catcher and a playstand on top of the cage. They do sometimes sit on the door. If a poop gets on the floor from there, I usually try to wipe it up right away. The papers in the cage proper get changed daily (ish) and the ones on the playtops as needed. Scooter cleans his beak by flinging the food off of it, and the wall by his cage often has fruit debris. I'm not as good about cleaning this off every day as I should, but the house gets a thorough cleaning every two weeks, and it definitely gets taken care of then, as does vacuuming up sub-critical feather and seed debris.

It sounds as if the stand in the foyer is one of those Tstand things, basically just a perch with maybe a couple of cups? Those aren't really good for keeping a bird amused... they are OK for a training perch or for temporary "parking". And, even at that, they should have a tray or skirt to catch most of the poop. If not, it may be too small for the bird. Our playgym setup now is a large java tree with a large rimmed base. We have litter in the base (it is way out of reach of the birds) and it catches the vast majority of dropped food and poop.. that gets scooped out every so often, but not obsessively.

And poops or food spills that occur in other areas of the house because the birds are out and about get cleaned up immediately or close to. Poop on a Tshirt.... well... it happens. I used to change immediately. Now sometimes I'll just wipe it off and change before I go out.

Since birds are sensitive to disease and need a pretty clean environment to be healthy, I get the impression most of us err more on the side of clean freak than utter slob, FWIW. I think I'm kind of lax in only wiping the cages down completely once or twice a week and doing a full up clean up every couple of months.

[a.susz]

i had an interesting/similar problem with my pionus. He loves to play on top of his cage, but kept pooping from up top into the cage, therefore smearing poop on just about everything inside. simple solution, i put a perch from the side of the cage, extended out the side, so now he actually poops from that perch. i also put his food for when he's out right next to that perch so he was encouraged to use the perch.