# Messy eater wasting pellets. Help?



## elizaisling (Mar 28, 2012)

Hi folks!

I have two female ringneck doves. They live in a large flight cage and eat Harrison's Adult Lifetime Fine pellets. 

Some spilling of pellets is obviously to be expected, but one of them is particularly messy when eating and a LOT of food ends up on the floor beneath the cage. Harrison's is pricey so I really hate to see it wasted that way, but I am hesitant to re-use pellets that have been on the floor already, which is the solution my husband suggested. They have had Clostridium infections twice in the past so I am really careful about making sure everything is clean, and I am worried about reusing bird food on the floor because we have a cat. Due to space constraints in our apartment, we have to keep the litter box and the bird cage in the same room. Maybe I'm being paranoid, but I worry that food on the floor could come into contact with bacteria from the litter box and make the birds sick.

I just vacuum up the spilled food up, but I am wondering if anyone has any recommendations about keeping the food from getting spilled in the first place? I use a feed cup with a sort of clear "hood" (JW brand "Clean Cup") but it hasn't really solved the problem. She manages to throw the pellets everywhere regardless.


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## FredaH (Apr 5, 2016)

I looked on YouTube just last night for anything that would stop my pigeons throwing food everywhere and worse than that doing the occasional poop in the food bowl, which can cause illness. There's vids on there of people making feed and water bowls from large plastic milk cartons with largish holes in so as they can put their heads in and still sort through the seed, can also be used for water. They do work and my guys went straight in, seeing food and being typical pigeons. There are much more fancy ones you can make from wood like troughs with wooden sticks they place their head through but with milk cartons you can throw them away when worn and cut holes in a new one. May help but make sure they're deep enough.


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