Minimising mess from budgies

[JonahAndTheSnail]

Any top tips for speeding up cleaning? I'm a first time bird owner and feel like I'm probably missing a trick or two. At the moment, I feel like I'm chasing my tail hoovering up food and feathers and wiping up poop!

So far I've tried newspaper as a substrate but I feel like it needs fully replacing every few days and dropped bits of food etc go everywhere. Someone on a budgie Facebook group recommended easibed and spot cleaning (poop scooping) daily with a full bedding change every month. I've just put this in to try out as it's cage cleaning day today. I wasn't sure how to contain the easibed, so I pegged newspaper as a base, not sure if anyone has found a better way?

I've fashioned a seed guard out of some old fabric to see whether that will help contain some of the mess. I probably need to come up with some easy to clean perches for the bird room for when they're free flying, so any suggestions greatly appreciated.

My long term plan is to replace the awful black carpet in their room with something easy to clean like laminate and invest in a robot hoover/mop. Does anyone have a similar setup and has it greatly reduced cleaning time? Need to convice DP as the bird room is a spare bedroom and he dislikes the idea of laminate in a bedroom as it's 'cold' apparently.

The cage skirts are amazing! I’m a new(ish) budgie owner too. They stretch around the cage and catch all feathers and seeds. An utter godsend

I use kitchen roll in the bottom, then just change it every couple of days. So much easier than using a substrate. It’s better for the birds too as no dust

In four months I’ve gone from one budgie to four, they are addictive

with bird cages I find it easy to put several layers of newspaper on the bottom of the cage clean and then fold inwards and remove the top layer every day - so you take all the poo and seed husks and leave it clean at least once a day.

then once a week or so you can wipe the base out with soapy water.
I use a handheld mini vac to just Hoover up seed husks etc around the cage - takes seconds.
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Thanks for the ideas. We tried several layers of paper for the first few weeks but the cage is huge and the design means it's hard to take them out without creating a big mess. The birds were also spooked everytime they flew near the bottom and the paper blew up at them.

The easibed has been in for a few weeks now and it seems to be working out a bit better and the birds seem to enjoy foraging around in it. I'll need to remove it all next week and replace, so I may not be feeling the same way then! I'm using F10 wipes to spot clean which seems to make cleaning day go a bit quicker

The mess is mostly millet seed from when we use it to try to tame them and feathers. I've sort of got used to it to some extent, but it's reinforcement my belief that black carpets and pets are not a good combo!