Essential hygiene: cleaning your bird feeders
Keeping your feeders clean is an essential activity that should be carried out as frequently as once per month to prevent your garden birds catching and/or spreading harmful bacterial diseases. Regular cleaning can prevent this from happening, and the appropriate use of safe materials (shown below) can even prevent bacteria growing on your feeders.
A classic example of disease spreading is in the case of the Greenfinch, a common garden bird that is unfortunately in decline due to its susceptibility to catching trichomonosis, which is spread through saliva. This is often spread because birds can simultaneously feed on single feeders. Watch out for pigeons and doves as these specific birds can carry the disease.
It’s always good practice to wear rubber gloves prior to handling a bird feeder; and also ensure to clean the feeders outdoors rather than indoors.
How to clean your wild bird feeders
Here’s our list of key points to consider when cleaning your feeders:
- Always empty the contents of the feeder before cleaning
- Spray sanitizer on and in the feeder, or wash out fully with a concentrate-based formula
- Use a cleaning brush to remove any excess dirt from within the feeder
- Wipe the feeder with a paper towle
- Leave the bird feeder to dry fully before using again
- Now, you should be ready to refill your feeder
A selection of bird feeder cleaning equipment
The more birds you get to your feeding stations, the higher the risk is of diseases being passed between your garden birds. Ark-Klens ready to use spray is a safe, non-toxic cleanser and disinfectant that helps reduce the risk of infection on your feeders, tables, bird baths and nest boxes. It is effective against psittacisos, E-coli, salmonella and flu virus.
This useful brush is made specifically for bird feeders from non-rust stainless steel and natural bristle, which wont scratch. 55.9cm (22″) long, its perfect for all those awkward little places other brushes won’t reach!
The Ark-Klens veterinary concentrate is suitable for disinfecting animal environments such as bird tables, feeders, cages, kennels and water bowls. This disinfectant reduces the spread of disease and germs on feeders and tables. 250ml makes 100 litres of disinfectant.
This handy table scraper keeps tables clean and hygienic.
Made from stainless steel with a comfortable wooden handle, this scraper removes food with minimum effort.
Length: 20.5cm
Badly written; there is no such phrase as ” ensure to “, and why are greenfinch and trichomonosis capitalised?
Hello Mr Weir,
Thanks for your feedback. Completely agree about the phrase “ensure to” and capitalisation of trichomonosis. These errors have now been changed as per your advice.
In terms of capitalisation of bird names, there is some interesting contention about this usage; for instance, if there’s a specific house-style or whether or not the initial capital is used to distinguish between common and proper nouns, as in the case of a Yellow Warbler or yellow warbler (i.e. a warbler that is yellow), which can cause confusion if capitals aren’t used. For this reason, we generally capitalise bird names, but really there’s no standard set in stone, and it can often boil down to personal preference. The RSPB, for example, capitalises the initial word of bird names rather than the second, as in “Dartford warbler”, not “Dartford Warbler” or “dartford warbler”.
“I read this after the grammar was corrected, so was spared those particular shocks to the system. And found it quite informative”, she said, willfully starting a sentence with a conjunction.
But seriously folks…
I have been using bog-standard dish washing liquid (e.g., Fairy), hot water and a dedicated scouring pad to clean my feeders. I let them soak for an hour or so, then use the scouring pad to go over everything, let them air dry, and then refill them. Is there anything wrong with that? The article implies that a disinfectant is required, is it really or will this regime do the trick to prevent disease spread? I will be grateful for your reply.
Hello,
Thanks for posting your question, and I can’t see anything wrong with using a conjunction at the beginning of a sentence. There are many, many example of this usage for stylistic reasons, as you aptly highlighted in your response!
When it comes to cleaning your bird feeders, it is important to note the difference between a detergent and a disinfectant. Washing up liquid, which is a detergent, is great for removing grease and dirt, but it may not be too effective at killing bacteria. Disinfectant, on the other hand, is a diluted bleach solution and should reduce bacteria to a safe level. The ideal scenario would be to use a combination of both detergent and disinfectant to make sure you reduce the possibility of bacterial infection, while at the same time creating nice, shiny feeders for your birds.
I hope this helps.
Awesome Blog. Really enjoyed reading.