Do you wash your birdfeeders???

[Nicos]

Well we never have- but I think we should start doing so!!!

Salmonella/ parasites????

BBC News - Warning over unclean bird feeders

[Jeanied]

I've got some special bird safe cleaner - I use it every 3 or 4 washes - in between I use really hot water and scrub the little perches well.

[Capsid]

Yes, I give mine a soak in diluted bleach every so often, maybe not often enough.

[Jeanied]

Mind you - it is all very well me keeping the feeders and birdbath really clean for the little darlings - but you should see how they repay me. I have never seen such messy eaters - they chuck the seed everywhere! And poo in the birdbath.

[Dottie]

I've recently got hold of a bird bath via freecycle and gave it a good scrub, ready to place in the garden. When checking out bird baths via the internet it had said that you need to change the water every day for the birds and keep the bird bath clean, although no mention of salmonella and parasites.

[Flummery]

No. I don't wash out my plant pots either. I am just a slob - throw mud at me!

[WrexTheDragon]

I wash all mine, but the birds prefer to drink from a bucket of water that is half full of manure. I use this as a plant feed and it stinks. When I give it a stair, I get loads of bubbles and the blackbirds cue up.

[aud]

i clean out mine once a month with just warm water, some of them that i cant get to the bottom is soaked in water over night. The peanuts tend to go off and i have even had in the past a small growth of grass from the seeds.
In summer i do it less because its tends to be ahem! dry.

[Alison]

Clean ours out whenever we refill the seed feeders but don't bother often with the fat ball holders as they don't get that manky. Funnily enough did them last week

Like Flum though, don't do plant pots....