FINCHforum

I've got two male zebra finches in a cage and the cage very much needs a good cleaning. The problem is that I can't catch the little guys to move them to a temporary cage so I can clean their regular one. I tried removing all the perches to see if that might make it easier, but no such luck. I'll try to attach a photo of their cage. Any suggestions?

Why remove them? Just remove the tray (or the bottom). Also, I remove almost all except one perch and clean all of those. Then wipe one half of the cage (while the birds glare at you from the other side) then do the other half, while the birds resume glaring from their new positions. The birds learn very quickly that you are not trying to catch them and will cooperate. Now you can return all the perches, etc and just remove and wash the remaining perch.

Turn off all the lights in the room and then you will be able to catch the finches very easily.

I use to have a cage like that and I would just remove the bottom and laid a newspaper under the cage while I cleaned the bottom. But when I catch my finches. I make the room dark and that way they can't see and you can just grab them. If it doesn't get dark enough in the room. U can spray them with water and that slows them down a little.

2hounddogs

I remember that you had lost a finch recently . I'm glad to see that you found a new companion for your boy.

Regarding cage cleaning:
As Anna mentioned, you can very easily clean the cage with the birdies in there, with doing a big clean-up (with removing the birds) only every few months. If you do a quick little clean-up/wipe down every day, the cage never really gets dirty.

If and when you really do have to remove your boys, you need to place your hand in the cage, wait for the kids to calm down, and do a quick but gentle grab.

Just in the last couple of days, I needed to grab over thirty of my birds (from large flights) to drag these rather huge cumbersome contraptions outside for a really good wash.

Grabbing all these birdlings, was a little hair raising, but in time and with practice, you do get better at it.

Good luck.

Elana

Hi 2houndogs,

I have the same problem when I have to catch my zebra finches and I find it very difficult to catch them inside the cage too.

I let mine fly out of the cage and chase them with a kitchen towel till they get tired and finally I manage to make the kitchen towel fall on them and pick it up gently.

Must admit I get pretty tired too tough but it is the only way that works for me.

Next time I am going to try to remove the perches and make the room dark, like jamezyboo21 suggested, and see if it works as it sounds much easier

Monica

As mentioned before, turn off all the lights but keep a phone light/ night light on so you can see the outlines of the birds. Working as quickly as possible, reach in with minimal noise and take each of them out. They most likely will not have moved and won't even react until much too late.
The reason behind this is, the lights turning off suddenly makes their eyes go out of focus, like ours. They won’t be able to see much, hence they stay still until they can see the cage.

Hello Alexia,

I will try it today as I have to test moving babies and parents around two cages because they do not get on very well.

Thank you for your advise.

Monica

monica

Hey, rather than a towel, you could get one of these. I got one for my escape artist. Twenty something bucks on Amazon. Overpriced but just having it is peace of mind. This would save you all that running around.

(my apologies, I don't know how to rotate the photo correctly)

Hello Azilla finch,

Thank you for your post but I am afraid I cannot open your pic. Any chance you could kindly tell me in words what the item is called so that I can search it on amazon, please?

many thanks.

Monica

Hi Alexia,

I tried.....but my birds are bloody smart!...and i am a dummy! Just could not catch them in the dark, in the cage, they still would fly away from me so I had to do my running around again...ha ha

I believe I have now sorted out my two cages and have the right birds in each one therefore I should not need to catch them again but thank you for the advise.

Monica

monica Sorry about that. It is a long-handled large bird net. Think of a tennis racquet with a super long handle and a net on it instead of racquet weaving. When the bird comes flying across the room you simply reach out with the net and catch the bird mid-flight into the net. Makes it MUCH easier when the bird is flying up over your head and out of your arms reach.

I think when I looked to buy it, I searched for it by looking it up as "Bird net" or "Finch net" or "large bird net"

Hope that helps.

Thanks for the great info! I'll have to try the "lights-out" trick this weekend. I'm hoping to give their cage a good deep-cleaning while the weather's nice.

Hello Finch Folk With Finch Catching Issues...

Here are a couple of pictures of nets that can be used.
- The blue handled one is from the Pet Shop, to catch fish in an aquarium. It is short handled ( handle about a foot long).
- the green handled net, is from the Dollar Store, and is considerably bigger. It is sold as a butterfly/bug net for kids (1$ or 2$) it has quite a long handle (around three feet long).

Good luck

Elana

I use a butterfly net from the dollar store, open the cage door and patiently wait for the bird to come out. The room is fairy small and because they aren't used to a lot of free flying, it doesn't take long for them to land somewhere I can gently put the net over them. I think it is far less traumatic than chasing them around the cage.