Hidey house/bird perch?

[Mimzy]

So I have a small parrot as well as 2 bunnies in the same room, they’re all completely cool with each other. I just have one tiny problem! Bird poop lol

A while back, my mom & I built my bird a perch. Usually, birds like to be up high, but for some reason my bird has began to much prefer sitting on the tray part & pooping off the side onto the floor as you can see in this picture….

Because of course pets like to make everything difficult lol. I also custom built a tray that extends off the front of his cage because he was also pooping off from his cage onto the floor. So I made the tray long enough to extend to where his droppings were ending up. Now of course, he sits on the tray & poops off the side of that, still onto the floor -.-

 So I know this isn’t completely bunny related, but does anyone have any ideas of how I could solve this issue? I’d mostly just like to keep his droppings away from the bunnies, I try to clean it up every day as soon as I notice it, I just don’t want them stepping in it but birds go every 15 minutes I need to remake Kramer’s perch already anyway, this one is old. Ideally, I wanted to make it like this:

So that it would be a double purpose perch the bunnies could enjoy as well. The only thing I can think of would be to make the hidey house part wider than the tray I have & put some kind of gate/fencing around the top of the hidey house, that way the bunnies wouldn’t be able to jump on top of it? Otherwise, I’m trying to think of a tray I could make that would be unstable for my bird to want to land on. Maybe I should install tiny posts along the trim of the tray, too small for him to grab onto & too close for him to fit in between lol

Kramer makes everything difficult Any ideas are welcome

[RabbitPam]

Hi, I can see why that would be a frustrating problem. My first impulse is to get the perch farther away from the bunnies altogether. It’s not good for them to contact bird poop on a regular basis – remember, they lick their paws to clean them, so they could be ingesting whatever they step in. So a hidey house for them as part of the perch would be encouraging that.

Second thought is getting something like a round, washable carpet to set under the whole perch. It would catch the poop, toss it into a washer or set tub to clean, maybe add a disposable sheet of paper on it to toss. My vet uses a big roll of brown paper on a roller and we would tear off a fresh sheet every day to line the bird cages. It could be set around the perch in strips if you can’t lift the perch onto it. Even if a bunny comes over and nibbles the edges, it’s only paper and safe.

If you put a NIC cube fence around it, that would keep out the bunnies, but the bird would probably perch on it and poop over the side there too. Hmmm. Might be worth a try though, making one square all around, set it on the paper roll, keep it across the room from bunnies, and see what happens.

Otherwise, you might want to consult an exotics vet who works with birds and bunnies and get the lowdown on what is – and is not – safe for their interaction. I know that some bird illnesses required total quarantine from mammals, while others did not.

[jerseygirl]

Otherwise, I’m trying to think of a tray I could make that would be unstable for my bird to want to land on.

I was thinking a miniature version of this cat fencing. Basically, it’s rollers installed on top of the fence line.
http://oscillot.com.au/gallery.html

I’m just not sure if something like that concept would deter Kramer!
Otherwise, I’d thought instead of a tray, a large cone or upside down umbrella shape made out of something he won’t like to perch on. And easy enough to remove for cleaning. Maybe like the head cones they use for animals after surgery? Made out of thin foam rather then a more rigid material.

For the top of the hidey box part, could you do an A-frame roof so buns can’t jump on top?

[Stickerbunny]

I assume you have a parrot – parrot poop is actually not that bacteria ridden (it’s not like pigeon poop) so it’s not really a health concern for them (as long as you clean often enough, the major problem with parrot poor is if it gets old and dry and flakes into the air it can cause respiratory issues, in both rabbits and humans).The only cross-contamination diseases are things  such as psittacosis, which is fatal to humans as well as other mammals, but rare enough and not a problem with a healthy bird. 

Birds are messy. Clearly. As such, my solution has been to simply baby gate off the section of the room with the bird stuff in it. You can train a bird to go back to a certain area to poop, through clicker or positive reinforcement training. My issue has been the food, since the bird LOVES to throw seeds on the ground and I really don’t want the rabbits eating that. Was easier to just give the bird a corner of the room for his stuff and baby gate that off from the bunnies.

Some things you can do to that perch thing though is to add more branches. Birds like different textures, different sizes, different heights depending on their moods and what they feel like at the time. You can drill into the PVC piping and use branches and dowels to make it more tree-like – thicker branches on the bottom, thinner branches as you get higher. That would probably get the bird more interest in not sitting on the tray. If you have a smaller hookbill, they love “floor sitting” which the tray would be though, since they are usually ground foragers in the wild.And any bird gets bored of the same perch size all the time, it can give them arthritis if they do not vary their perching spots.

You could also make a longer, lower tray underneath the first one and add a (non-coated, zinc is toxic and will cause heavy metal toxicity) wire grate to it to discourage sitting (it irritates their feet, so they often don’t like it, if your bird is weird and likes it then you want to remove the grate so it doesn’t cause foot sores). Or you could try adding one of the plastic mess guards with some dowels to hold it up, since it wouldn’t be “stable” feeling and would be uncomfortable to sit on, but would catch the poop and any other mess (such as food).

[Mimzy]

Thank you all so much! These are great ideas! I really like the idea of that cat fencing, Jersey girl, assuming it’s sensitive enough (he’s weighed in grams lol), I’ll have to look into that. I was thinking something kinda like that but it wouldn’t move, would just be maybe a large PVC pipe that I could fix into the edge of the tray that’s too wide for him to grab on & would be too slippery. Also like the A frame idea

I’m actually in the process of training him to fly back to his cage or perch to poop, because for a while, he was flying onto the bunny cage & that was really frustrating. He’s finally stopped going on there but now I need to teach him he’s got to be on the actual perch if he needs to go lol. I think he thinks as long as he’s somewhere on the perch, tray included, he can go :/

Really like all of these ideas, I’ll definitely have to play around with some of them & see what works I read about the arthritis they can get too, he has plenty different perches inside his cage but while he’s out, he hardly goes in there. So I have been wanting to make a new & much better perch with a variety of perches. Thanks!

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