Update: I thoroughly cleaned out the cage in the backyard with a hose, after transferring Loki to a small budgie cage for an hour and a half. He was quite pissed off about the whole process, as you’d expect, but is keenly inspecting the new rearranged interior of his big cage after I coaxed him back in.
I still feel rotten about how bad it got, and how Thor died because I let it get that bad. There were significant layers of old shit mixed with seed husks in the tray under the cage, and it would have been harbouring bacteria, mold, etc, and drifting through the air, increasing infection risk for those poor birds.
I have extensive mental health issues, and they cause me to neglect large parts of my life, but as others here have rightly pointed out, that does not in any way justify the neglect of someone else whose welfare is my responsibility.
I’ve cleaned the cage properly, and also rearranged things to make it easier to maintain that cleanliness. There’s butcher’s paper lining the tray now, easy to remove and replace every week. I have moved the water bath, the seed tray, and the water bottle around so that they are less likely to get fouled, but still easy to access and clean.
I don’t have a pic of Loki in the new cage, since I’ve given him some quiet time to recover from the stress of moving back and forth, but here is one of him in the budgie cage, looking like some sort of giant with the tiny seed and water trays built for birds less than half his size.
Edit: this is an update on my previous post, made in mourning and denial: https://sh.itjust.works/post/63916100
That was a temporary cage, to keep him in while I cleaned the big cage.
Edit: I used to let both birds fly around the room freely, and in fact roost up on a curtain rail, but as I also wasn’t cleaning very well you can imagine how that went.
Get a hand held vacuum for cleaning the feed they toss out when eating. Mice love to find it all over the place.
If you’re getting better at cleaning then I’d let it out more often. Not being able to fly around means the muscles in it’s wings will eventually atrophy and it won’t be able to fly at all.
Lol I got some plexi glass, cut it and drilled a couple holes, and twist tied it to the cage for the seed, my little gremlin loved to throw his seed. Thats a nice cage, I got a dragon wood perch for the top of my cage, they can’t chew through it, and a cuddle bone is a good addition too. The get to chew on something, and its good for them. Looks like you have done nice toys too. My bird also liked part of his cage covered, I think it gives them some private personal space maybe. I know you’ve struggled, but, it looks like youre doing a good job fixing it.