problem with perches under other perches

[ac12]

I just found out today why you don't put perches over other perches.
My lower perch usually gets poop on it, from the birds on the upper perch. The problem is that the poop is HARD. In fact the dry poop is so hard that I use #50 sandpaper to remove it.

Well today, I found blood on the perches.
It was from my young juv zebra. A spot on the bottom of one toe was raw. I think his foot was scraped raw on the hard rough poop. On Fri I moved him from his foster parents to a male cage. And today I had to traumatize him again, by moving him into a hospital cage, w a smooth cardboard floor. He is now in the master-bath, away from the other birds, so he is not excited by the calling of the other birds. Hope it will only be a few days for his foot to heal.

I rearranged the perches to eliminate the perch crossing over a lower perch. Tomorrow I'm going to check on 2 of my other cages where I might have a similar problem, but with curved branches that I used as perches.

[poohbear]

[lovemyfinch]

I believe that poohbears response is more like the real reason why I have never had one perch on top of the other.

[Ursula]

[skythrutrees]

I actually do place perches underneath each other. But I have to do some figuring in my head as to where the poop is going to be dropping, and arrange the perches accordingly. If they sit smack dab underneath, that's not good. But if I can figure out where the poop is going to go, then I can move the perch underneath a little to the left or right.

Isn't is strange I spend time trying to figure out where my finches will be pooping?

Also, I like to place perches diagonally, attached to the side of the cage and the back or front. The smaller ones go on top, the larger ones go on bottom. This also prevents the bottom ones getting too poopy.

If I don't do this, I think I waste cage space.

Anyway, that's my 2 cents.

Have a great day!

[ac12]

I actually use poohbear's setup, straight above and in line w the lower perch. w only a couple/few birds in each cage, I very infrequently have the birds stacked up like that. Being directly above, the poop misses the bottom perch. In a smallish cage, it is hard to "offset" the perches w/o crowding into flying space. Where they do cross, now only one perch, I check that the lower perch where the poop lands is not used that much.