All pets are messy… dogs, cats, and especially birds can all cause quite the mess in your home.

Cockatiels are absolutely NO exception.

In fact, cockatiels are the messiest of almost any other pet bird species thanks to their dust and fluff output.

Aren’t we cockatiel owners the lucky ones?

Below you’ll find a guide on how to keep your home nice and tidy while living with messy birds, I’ll be going through some ways that I clean my home on a daily basis as well as some general cleaning tips.

By the end of this article, you’ll know various methods for managing your cockatiels poop, fluff, and general mess.

Cleaning will barely be a problem for you anymore as you’ll have a mess management plan.

Quick Navigation

• How To Deal With Your Cockatiels Poop
• How To Manage Cockatiel Dust
• Conclusion

How To Deal With Your Cockatiels Poop

When it comes to managing your cockatiels poop there is only one effective way to do it…

By setting up newspaper or anything disposable on the floor around your birds favorite hangout spots, we call those poop zones.

Poop zones are places your cockatiel will perch and sit for a while and will likely do many poops.

These guys poop every 15 minutes, so even spots they don’t sit in for a long time can be considered poop zones.

Having disposable material on the floor around the poop zones is by far the most effective way of dealing with their poop in a way where you won’t need to wipe each and every time they do their business.

Known poop spots for most birds include:

• Their cage perimeter
• Any perches or trees around the house
• The top of open doors
• Chairs or tabletops

You definitely want to make sure you have the perimeter of their cage completely covered, most birds like to hangout on the outside of their cage longer than most other places.

What I do is set up the newspaper around all the drop zones at the start of the day and then get rid of it at the end of the day when it’s bedtime.

That’s a pretty simple yet effective way of doing things.

You may need to wipe a few surfaces at the end of the day as their droppings don’t always land in the designated poop zones.

How To Sit Your Bird On Your Shoulder (Poop Free)

If you want to sit your cockatiel on your shoulder for a while, you’ll probably get poop on.

And that’s something all cockatiel owners want to avoid.

The best way to avoid getting pooped on with your bird on your shoulder is to get in time with their poop schedule.

What I mean by “getting in time” is learning exactly when your bird will poop…

That is key to stopping them from pooping on you.

Once you know when they’ll poop, simply take them off your shoulder, hold them over the newspaper and wait for the bombs to drop.

Remember, cockatiels poop every 15 – 20 minutes. That’s their poop schedule.

After you see them poop, you can give them around 15 minutes of shoulder time before they’ll need to poop again.

After you take them off your shoulder and they poop on the newspaper, you have another 15 minutes before they’ll do another one.

Just rinse and repeat this method to prevent getting pooped on.

It may seem like a bit of effort to continually watch the clock and keep in time with your birds poop schedule, but you’ll get used to it over time.

However, there is one flaw in this method…

Your bird may poop earlier than you expect. In that case, you may just have to accept it.

It’s not a flawless method but it helps 90% of the time.

The other option is to throw a towel over your shoulder to shield your clothes from their droppings, although there is a slim chance your bird will actually sit where the towel is.

Your bird won’t care either way, they’ll gladly drop one on your shoulder without a second thought.

How To Manage Cockatiel Dust

Dust is something that cockatiels, cockatoos, and African grey parrots have a lot of, cockatiels are especially dusty.

Look at this cockatiel releasing this dust bomb:

That’s a lot of dust!

Some birds can produce more or less dust, it depends on the individual bird, just like how some humans are naturally hairier than others.

But there will be dust. Most likely a lot of it.

One thing you can do to naturally reduce your cockatiel dust is to bathe them more often…

As your cockatiel bathes, they will be removing some of the dust particles from their bodies and there will be less dust during preening.

You should try to reduce the dust that comes off your cockatiel as much as possible because excessive dust inhalation can cause respiratory issues for you when you breathe in the tiny feathers and dust particles.

(Keep in mind, you will never eliminate their dust completely, you can only reduce it.)

If someone in your house already has respiratory issues, bird dust won’t be doing them any favors.

It’s probably best to avoid adopting a cockatiel if this is the case as their dust can cause an existing respiratory issue to worsen.

Preventing Excessive Dust in The Air

Another good way to reduce feathers floating around is with an air filter.

Air filters (or purifiers) do a good job of sucking up dust-filled air throughout your house and replacing it with clean air.

It uses a filter to collect and store your birds dust dander while emitting clean air.

Set one of these bad boys up in the bird room and enjoy a cleaner atmosphere.

Regular vacuuming is also a good way to pick up any dust and dander that have fallen to the ground.

Fallen feathers can easily be lifted back into the air, so vacuuming is a must when it comes to keeping the air clean.

Cage Cleaning Tip

There is a lesser-known method to keeping dust and dander out of the air while replacing the cage liner.

While replacing the liner, the tiny feather particles that have fallen to the cage floor will explode when you replace the liner.

There is a simple way to stop this…

Simply mist some water over the cage liner, this will make the feather particles stick to the paper and they won’t puff out while replacing them.

It’s a lesser-known cleaning tactic but it’s effective in keeping the air fresh and feather free.

Conclusion

Cockatiels are messy birds, if you’ve adopted one, this should come as no surprise.

With cockatiel ownership, you’ll need to deal with feathers, poop, food mess, and the other various messes they are known to make.

All birds are huge responsibilities that require a huge amount of time to look after, plus all the time you need to spend cleaning up after them.

They’re a big workload.

Hopefully, after reading this article, you have a few new cleaning tricks up your sleeve that you can use to battle against your cockatiels mess.

Sources

• https://peteducate.com/how-often-do-cockatiels-poop/
• https://www.petassure.com/new-newsletters/controlling-bird-dust-and-dander/
• https://avianenrichment.com/learn/physical-needs/hygiene/controlling-feather-dust
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvsdqRLmyhE