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How to deal with the mess?


monax

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I have been reading with great interest all the threads on fresh vegetables and fruits and recipes for mash and chop. I have a more basic question though....any advice on how to manage the mess? I know that parrots are inherently messy eaters, but as a new parrot owner, I guess I have been caught by surprise.

 

Toby is my 6 month old TAG, and I have had him for about 3 weeks. I've been progressively introducing new vegetables every other day, and trying everything from chopping the veggies down to different sizes, using the food processor to mash the food up, warming it in the microwave, serving it raw...but regardless of what I do, the food gets flung far and wide. I usually feed him on the cage playtop, and we eat with him in the dining room as he seems to like that. Toby will drop food all over his play too, and then climb down from the perch to retrieve what he's dropped, even when there is plenty of food left in his bowl. The food also gets dropped in the seed catcher, all around the floor around the cage, and occasionally a few feet away. I have taken to putting newsprint around the cage at feeding time just to try to make the cleanup easier.

 

I would appreciate any tips....where and how do you feed your grays? Any particular way I should prepare the food so that it gets eaten and not thrown? Thanks!

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Its all part of the greyt experience and if you can't handle the mess then you might want to consider another companion, birds are messy plain and simple but I wouldn't have it any other way, now back to the broom and mop, a woman's work is never done.

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Sam's cage is surrounded by windows on two sides. I took a clear shower curtain liner and tacked it to the wall under the window sills to protect the walls. Joe (my husband who welds) made a track on outside of the cage, where I slide a small peice of plexi glass in and out to protect the windows. I can clean the plexi and just put it back in. It's a never ending task to clean up after his messy eating, but we've found ways to manage it.

 

Karen and Sam

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Think of it this way, in the wild he would be ensuring that the other creatures would have food available, flinging half eaten good to the ground. In you home unless you have a dog that eats parrot leftovers off the floor then my suggestion is to place the food dish on the cage floor, just avoid putting it where his droppings fall. It does make things a bit cleaner and limits his throwing trajectories. There are lots of videos of Greys in the wild ground foraging so it is natural.

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I, too, have put a piece of plexiglass behind Amali's cage to minimize wall clean up. The seed skirt that came with the cage does a decent job of helping out as well. Beyond that - I couldn't live without my little Dyson hand held vacuum; it might as well say "Greyt Mess Cleaner" on it ... thing is invaluable!

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