Bird Litter

[debbie276]

ppg5tu No difference

[SKfinch]

Well I use a recycled A4 printer paper from my office, I turn the paper up to show the white side with the printed side down. I think it is very useful it shows a white background which enables me to monitor the bird poops along with food leftovers and also they are not bad in absorbing water.

[Zebra-mutations]

I will make a review for using horse wood pellets for my breeding cages. Around 40 of them.

I added the litter and straight away the smell of the pine was overpowering so i opened the window. Locked the cat up and opened their door to air it out. This had to be done for a few days.

Bad start -_-

I notice it is great for absorbing stuff. Makes cages look hell of alot cleaner too!

BUT.... come clean out time i had no idea how to clean them out. I had a poopy scoopy to sieve the husks and poop out. And took any stained pellets out too.

But i got to cage 3 and an hour had passed and i was getting very chesty.

So i thought i would spray the pellets to stop the dust floating about but then the bottoms of the cages were getting slimy!

Then i noticed one of my bird clutches tail bobbing alot.

Sooo after that i tried to empty the whole tray after spraying it with water to stop the dusk but it was like a volcano erruption with all that dust!

Another thing is you tend to over feed the birds because you can not tell if they have eaten the food or just chucked it everywhere.

Turns out i was filling their dish up and they were just lobbing it everywhere. I wasted about a cup full of food just to provide them with something to eat.

If i see it on the newspaper i would usually just refill when they run out (little and often).

And then they would pick through the litter to find the food and im a bit worried about health and hygiene.

So end result??

BAD BAD BAD!!!

Unhygienic, dusty, wasteful and im getting chesty on cage 3 so god knows what its doing to my birds.

Sticking to newspaper. Worried about even putting some pellets underneath the perches like i used to because the pellets swell and turn to powder as everyone has mentioned.

HOWEVER! If you have an indoor avairy that has a dust extractor or the odd cage inside WITH a grate so they cannot get to the pellets i think it would work out.

But unfortunatly between 10-40 cages the pine smell would be too much along with the dust.PLUS the amount of time it would take to clean all those cages out, it just isnt do able! I do not recommend it to people who have cages with no grate as they will forage in it and i think they can pick up all sorts of infection.

Sticking to newspaper. I have to clean out like every 3 days though...

[cindy]

As I stated earlier...the avian vet took one look at the sawdust/pellet from the soaked pine pellets(brought her the before soaked and after soaked and crumbled pellets in a baggie), she said absolutely DO NOT use these....it can cause eye, upper respiratory irritations/infections, breathing complications...not to mention the CDC did a study and sawdust can cause cancer in the lungs.

http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/pel88/wooddust.html

[rcirmele]

I'm still having great results with the pine pellets. $6.99 for a 40 pound bag at Tractor Supply Company. I don't notice an overpowering smell, but I only have the one large cage. I dump the entire trays once a week. There is no swelling just from bird waste. I was still concerned about the swelling under their bath but I just put a couple of paper towels underneath the bath and the towel catches most of the water. Because I don't have excessive swelling and breakdown of the pellets, I don't have a dust problem. I love the fact that the cage still smells clean after a week. The studies that were done on humans were hardwoods in a furniture factory with very high dust levels. And the studies on guinea pigs were not representative of what you would encounter in my bird room. BTW, I sleep in the bird room and my lungs only function at about 60% so I'm probably much more sensitive to respiratory irritants than the birds. I'll let you know if any of them develop any problems.

[Sally]

Great topic! Everyone has to work out their own program, of course, but it helps to get the ideas and experiences of others. I myself have tried so many different litters and have yet to find the perfect one. However, this is my latest program, which seems to be working quite well. It is not practical for those with just a few cages, but for those of us with no restraint, it can work. I borrowed these ideas from a friend.

I bought a paper cutter from Uline. Mounted the paper cutter on a flat counter in my back storage room. Bought rolls of butcher paper from Uline. Today, I was cleaning cages, all my cages are either doubles with two trays, or large enough tray that it needs two sheets of paper overlapped. I had already cleaned 16 cages, so before starting the next group of 12 (I have four different sizes in cages), I looked at the clock--5:39pm. I went to the back room, cut 24 pieces of paper, and started on the bird room. No filling seed hoppers or water tubes, just taking out the eggfood dish, dumping the trays, scraping any dried poop that missed the paper, placing new paper in trays, replacing trays--5:59pm. So it averaged out to 1.66 minutes per cage, including the time to cut the 24 pieces of paper. And I wasn't hurrying nor trying to see how fast I could go, just curious as to how long it would take me. With 36 cages right now (72 pieces of paper), I can clean them all (basic cleaning) in just about an hour, and certainly less time if I wanted to go faster. And if I precut the paper before cleaning day, it would be even less.

I had been wiping out the trays with a paper towel after dumping the paper. My friend told me to get an old metal spatula and use that as a scraper. I had an old barbecue spatula that is quite sturdy and works great for this. I first tried the white butcher paper. It looks great, but is a bit slick (none of my cages have grates). It certainly helps to spot any poop that looks suspicious, but it also means that in no time at all, that poop shows up, unlike when I used newspaper, which hid much of the poop. Now I am trying their brown kraft paper. It is a tiny bit thicker I think, less slick, but poop is much more obvious (think white splotches).

[Finnie]

Sally, that sounds like a great idea, for people with multiple cages. I was going to ask you for a link to Uline, but I just decided to google it for myself.

Here is the link to their paper cutters: http://www.uline.com/BL_502/Paper-Cutte ... ords=paper

Kraft paper rolls: http://www.uline.com/BL_1951/Kraft-Pape ... ords=paper

For those interested, blank newsprint rolls: http://www.uline.com/BL_1954/Newsprint- ... ords=paper

And they also sell the kraft paper and newsprint by sheets. I'm going to have to compare their prices to the company I bought my sheets from last time. http://www.uline.com/BL_1953/Newsprint- ... ords=paper

There is something to be said for having all your cages the same sizes. I have not standardized mine, and I have to have a card on my cutting table that lists the different dimensions I need to cut for each particular cage. I definitely appreciate that I have been moving towards having all my breeding pairs in the 30" flight cages.

[Sally]

Having standard cages all the same size would be such a help for those of us who have lots of cages. Altogether, I have 44 cages (I actually have some empty cages right now!). There are four different size trays in 42 of the cages. The two large flight cages don't have paper in the bottom right now, but I am thinking of using paper in those as well, so that would make 5 different sizes. It would be a bit easier to have one standard size.

Abba sells those cage banks that have paper mounted on a roller on each level of cages, you just pull the paper through from one end, all the dirty paper slides out, and clean paper rolls off the holder. In just minutes, you could clean 9 or 12 cages with little effort. But I'd have to sell all my birds to be able to afford those cages!

[Finnie]

But I'd have to sell all my birds to be able to afford those cages!

Yeah, I've seen those, and thought the same thing!

[jebediah]

I use carefresh natural since I have it around for my other critters. I prefer using it without a cage liner at the bottom. If you make sure there are no holes in between the bedding, all the poops sits on top of the bedding and doesn't actually touch the tray, making a liner obsolete.

[Kiishka]

All right, guys, I have a somewhat unique situation as far as cage litter (and I've not actually finished my aviary yet, so I'm not to the testing phase!)

1. it will be a refurbished-furniture-type display aviary in my living room, so no bottom grate to keep the birds away from the litter

2. I have a one legged diamond dove who is entirely floor-bound, and moves around using a combination of scooting and flapping.

So in other words, I need something that's not incredibly abrasive for my crippled dove, and not attractive for the birds to steal/eat, as some people have pointed out issues with toxicity or blockage-related deaths. Wood shavings (not pellets)? That fluffy animal bedding a few people have raved about?

[Kiishka]

I don't have an issue with paper per ce, I just think it looks extremely messy in the aviary and will involve me having to make a template for the aviary shape to cut the paper into, as it's a corner cabinet and has an irregular shape to it. Just a lot of work, and I'd be changing it all the time because of the dove.

[Beckyrasdf]

Was wondering if anyone has used sand? We are considering puting a pair of button quail in the bottom of our aviary, and so want something safe and comfortable for both the finches and quail...

[debbie276]

I used sand for many years. The one minor problem was that it would smell slightly around the water dish when they splashed the water. I cleared the sand away from the water dish and didn't have an issue.

[MiaCarter]

Careful with the sand.
It can house nasty organisms.

I considered using it and asked my vet and she listed off a whole bunch of scary organisms that are common and it deterred me!

If you used sand, I believe you'd need to use something "clean" like play sand.
I would put it in a container and freeze it for a couple days prior to use to kill off organisms from the outdoors. It wouldn't kill everything, but it would kill most. (Conversely, you could cook the sand in the oven at a few hundred degrees to kill organisms. Not sure how that would smell, though...or what it would do to your cake pan!)

(Though I should note I'm in a more tropical climate than Debbie, and I think we have lots more organisms in Florida vs. NJ! It's hot year-round, so those micro organisms and just grow and grow, even in clean sand in a bag in a garden center, for instance. Whereas somewhere colder, you'd have freezing temps part of the year, so that would kill off organisms periodically. We don't get those freezes, so organisms - micro and macro - tend to go nuts.)