The fun part of having birdfeeders in your yard or property is putting the food out and watching the birds come and enjoy it. Many people don’t think about the maintenance aspect – mostly the cleaning and hygiene procedures you’ll need to regularly undertake so your feathered friends are not put at risk of sickness or disease.
Thankfully, it’s simple and quick to keep birdfeeders clean and hygienic, especially when you keep a regular maintenance schedule. This prevents any risk of outbreak and saves you big cleanups later.
Unclean bird feeders pose a number of health risks to the birds that come to them: fungus and bacteria can grow on the food and the feeding equipment. This is one of the most common risks, as it does not take long for bacteria and fungus to form on old food, or unclean feeding equipment. Your local climate will have a great impact on just how vigilant you’ll need to be in this area; warm and humid areas are ripe for fungal growth so you need to stay on top of things to avoid this great risk to birds. Once birds are infected with bacteria or fungal spores it can end up being a death sentence for them.
Aspergillus is a serious fungus that causes aspergillosis in birds, and this is often a deadly condition. This fungus will grow on foods within a short amount of time when conditions are warm, wet or humid – but even those in dry or cooler areas need to avoid having any type of fungal growth occurring at birdfeeders.