Cages, Locks and Mess

The truth is that parrots are very very messy. Here are two pictures of  Kaja's cage. One is taken after cleaning and one right in the morning before cleaning. We clean our cages every day and this gives you an idea what a Macaw cage can look like in 1 day sometimes! Don't be fooled by nice looking pictures on the internet, these birds are extremely messy, they are meant to live in the canopy of tall rain forest trees and they don't care what mess is underneath, actually the mess is good in the nature, because they help spread seeds from the nuts they crack open and they like to enrich the poor soil on the bottom of their cage in the same way :) 

Kaja's cage after daily morning clean up.

Kaja's cage in the morning, he sleeps on his cage at night,
we seldom lock him.

Locks are another thing to consider. Both of our birds know how to unlock many different locks and are far beyond the simple "start lock" that came originally with their cage from the factory. Molly figures out her new lock in few weeks and after few successful openings she usually can do it sometimes even faster then I can. 

Kaja after he figured out a new lock

We have a little system figured out when it comes to cleaning cages. For some reason when we vacuum the birds go crazy and start dancing, screaming and dunking their head in the water bowl, they just want to have a shower. So I get ready, prepare the vacuum beside the cage, put the newspaper from the cage in a garbage bag, turn the vacuum on and quickly vacuum the cage and the floor around it and by then the birds are already flapping their wings like crazy so I get the plant mister and soak them down (you might also spray spots on the cage if the birds pooped somewhere so its easy to wipe it). This way the cage is clean already and no mess is flying around from them flapping while being showered. You probably will have your little system, but this works good for us and maybe you might try it too.