Only me, myself & I

[Jan]

I am only one person as we all are but oh my gosh I am having a hard time with keeping up on keeping the aviaries clean enough and plus my bird room and right now my bird room has 14 babies in it... so as you know by the time you get one area done and do the another, the first one you did is already getting dirty. I must be getting old, having a very hard time with it all.

So I have only two aviaries one is larger than the other, don't really have that many pairs, like 22 pairs plus some singles. It's only me doing aviary stuff and its getting old. Waaa! Twenty-two pairs is nothing compared to what some of you have but I find it is about my limit to be able to care for them on my own.

So how is it for some of you other breeders, is it just yourself or do you have help or hired help and how long does it take you out in your aviaries? How often do you clean up the mess in there?

[xafsmom]

I used to get overwhelmed with the cleaning until I redesigned my aviary and nursery. The aviary is on a daily 'surface' cleaning with a deep clean twice a week. One of the big things that helped SO much there was I made my noegel caging more european. So now I can remove the bottom grating and the suspended cages have a drop pan situated a bit lower beneath the grating. My perches are a combination between 1x2's (or 2x4's) and natural woods but they are stationed in cups and slide out entirely from the external of the cage.

So it's simply; 1. dump out pan, swap it with clean pan. 2. slide out grating, swap it with clean grating. 3. slide out perch, swap with new. 4. remove all feed/water dishes, swap with new.

Then clean the old and disinfect for next use.

In my nursery, I go a step farther. I swap out bins and weaning cages. The cages and bins get removed every 3 days, taken out, power washed with hot water and disinfected and left to bake in the sun for several days, then re-disinfected. This means every cage, perch, toy, etc.

Then incubator and pediatric brooders are simply cleaned and disinfected and then cultured for bacteria twice a year. Hard to really break those down for cleaning and too expensive for swapping!

Twice a week, the room itself is easily folded up, taken out, taken down or otherwise filled with removable stuff for ease of cleaning. Tables and such are taken outside, power cleaned and disinfected. Inside, the floor is vacuumed and disinfected. Ventilation units are cleaned and filters replaced. Essentially deep cleaned.

Daily cleaning is mostly, vacuum, sweep, mop, sponge off, disinfect, change bedding (3+ times a day), etc.

The breeding aviaries can be cleaned in an hour with this swapping system. The nursery in about 20 minutes.

[Jan]

Oh gosh, I don't have a system like that going. You've made me tired just reading it though! How I wish I could have done many things differently back in the earlier days. Now I am going to be getting out of breeding hopefully soon enough so no need to go changing things now.

AND after all these years I still basically raise my babies within my kitchen area... although my babies do stay in a bird room that I have all my cages in but a few of my pet birds are in there too. I never tried to do the MAP Certification because I know I'd never make it due to not having a specific designated area as a nursery among other things that would disqualify me from it.

[xafsmom]

Yeah, they're pretty tough. I had to get my vet out here 7 times before he'd okay me for MAP. Awww I'm sad you're getting out of breeding. I really liked your coral-billed program!!

[chapala]

I have no idea what you do if you get sick! All those babies depending on you round the clock. A tough job to be sure!

[Jan]

Reta ... Ugh... birds need care even when you are sick as you know, I have many times over had to do the aviary birds and even hand feed babies when I have been really sick. A few times where it can take me about an hour to feed the aviary birds might take me several hours to complete when I am bad enough.

Tina - I doubt very seriously if my Coral Bills are going anywhere for a while, no one at this time with things so down in the economy is going to buy about $8,000. worth of CB's. Didn't you say you would like to buy 5 pairs??

Oh wow... I know the MAP thing is kind of hard I know to get approved/certified, I just do not have the set up they want... and if I was, I'd probably have to triple pay a vet to come here as I am like over 50 miles from either avian vet I use, and that is even if they do such a thing for MAP. I'm not worried, as I am not even going to try for it.

[xafsmom]

LOL! When I have a spare 8k, sign me up! They're so uncommon in US aviculture, I'd hate for them to just disappear.

[Jan]

Originally Posted by xafsmom

LOL! When I have a spare 8k, sign me up! They're so uncommon in US aviculture, I'd hate for them to just disappear.

I get the feeling that is a no go!! I don't think anyone has a spare $8K.