Читать книгу Birds For Dummies - Gina Spadafori - Страница 104

For your own sanity and for your bird’s health, you need to stock up on basic cleaning supplies. Here’s your shopping list:

 Brushes: Assemble an array of brushes with plastic bristles to clean fecal matter off perches, toys, dishes, and cage bars. If your bird drinks from a bottle, you also need a bottle brush. Make sure the brushes you buy can be run through the dishwasher’s sanitize setting.

 Cleaners and disinfectants: Plain old soap and water go a long way here and won’t cost you very much. For disinfecting, use ½ cup of ordinary bleach to one gallon of water. Do your cleaning away from your bird, of course, and make sure to rinse and air-dry anything you clean before reintroducing items to her living space. Although scented cleaners may smell good to you, avoid strongly perfumed products such as those with pine oils. They can damage your bird’s delicate respiratory membranes.

 Dishwasher: If you don’t have one of these kitchen helpers, bringing a bird into your life and home is a great excuse to invest in a dishwasher. Sure, you can hand-wash in hot, soapy water, but running dishes, perches, toys, and cage grates and skirts through the hottest dishwasher cycle gets them cleaner more easily. For rope toys, your washing machine is a lifesaver, too.

 Handheld vacuum: Great for snarfing up pellets, dust, feathers, shells, seeds … and everything else. You gotta have one.