Category Home Problem Solver

•  Lights-out curtains

An attractive small tablecloth, pillowcase or scarf can become a night-time cover for your bird’s cage. Covering a cage is an effective way to help many birds relax.

•  Natural decor for your bird

Clip a small tree branch to put in your bird’s cage. He’ll be able to climb it over and over again, and will also peck it to sharpen his beak.

•  Clean a bird house with vinegar

A 50:50 mixture of white vinegar turns a birdcage into a beautifully clean home and does a good job of cleaning plastic bird toys. After wiping on the mixture, rinse with fresh rap water and then dry the cage with a clean cloth.

•  Paper bag fun

Open a brown paper bag and put it on a table or other surface when your bird is out of his cage. He will enjoy peeking in and out.

•  Let your bird play peck-the-spools

Make a hanging toy for your bird’s cage by stringing wooden spools on a leather cord and tying it diagonally near the top of the cage. Your bird will enjoy pecking at it and making the spools sway back and forth.

•  Use your imagination

It’s easy to keep a bird occupied. While pet shops sell plenty of toys for caged birds, you can easily entertain your pet with items you have around the house. Milk jugs, mop heads and feather dusters are good toys for birds that like to pluck feathers. Try some of these:

1.  Plastic bottle caps
2.  Plastic milk cartons, with the top cut off and the edges frayed with scissors
3.  Wads of newspaper
4. Shredded computer paper
5. A natural-bristle flat broom
6.  Clothes pegs (without wires or springs)
7.  Small wooden balls.

•  A fun (or frustrating?) toy

Add a new dimension to a clear plastic drink bottle by putting beads, plastic clothes pegs or other brightly coloured objects inside and recapping the bottle. Your bird will spend hours on end trying to figure out how he can get to the objects inside.

•  Partially close fish-food dispensers

Some fish food containers have large open tops; others have far too many large holes — and both can lead to overfeeding your aquarium or goldfish-bowl fish. Cover half of the container mouth with masking tape to better control the dispersal of fish flakes.

• Pantihose as tank cleaners

Save an old pair of pantihose for yet another household use: once you’ve removed the fish, the water and any ornaments from an aquarium tank, you can turn old pantihose into a cleaning tool in two ways: fit a leg over your arm so that you have the foot over your fingers like a mitten, or ball the pantihose up and use them as you would a sponge. No matter which method you choose, make a simple vinegar and water solution (1 part white vinegar to 1 part water) and use pantihose to wipe down the sides and bottom of the tank.

•  Put aquarium water to good use

When you change the water in your tank, don’t pour it down the drain. It’s excellent for hatching brine shrimp (the favourite food of sea horses, if you keep a sea horse or two in your aquarium) and it makes an excellent fertilizer for houseplants and outdoor ornamentals alike. The nutrients in the water make flowering plants and vegetables thrive like few other fertilizers. And don’t be put off by the smell — it will dissipate about an hour after you water your plants.

•  Pep up a goldfish with salt

Treat your goldfish to a swim in the ocean: a simulated ocean. Stir 1 teaspoon marine salt into 1 litre room-temperature water and pour it into a wide-mouthed container. Let your fish swim for about 15 minutes in this slightly salty mix and then return the fish to the tank. The saltwater will put a little pep in her step. Caution: it is essential to use marine salt. Never use table salt as the pH is too high. If the fish shows the slightest sign of distress, immediately return it to the tank.

•  Tasty treats for hermit crabs

Enhance a hermit crab’s diet by adding bits of any of the following to its food dish: mango, papaya, coconut, apples, pureed apple, bananas, grapes, pineapple, strawberries, melons, carrots, spinach, leafy green lettuces (not iceberg), broccoli, grass, leaves, strips of bark from deciduous trees (not conifers), unsalted nuts, sultanas, unsalted crackers, unsweetened cereals and plain rice cakes. A wide-ranging crustacean menu indeed.

• Save your tortoise’s gravel

Don’t throw away the gravel or aggregate in your tortoise’s bowl every time you clean it. Dump the gravel, aggregate and any other bowl materials into a colander. Place the colander over a bucket and pour water over the contents until the gravel is clean. Next, pour household bleach over everything. Finally, run water over the contents of the colander until the smell of bleach has completely gone.

•  A lost snake

 It’s easy to lose a snake, but don’t panic. Here are two good ways to find your missing pet:

1.  Place foil or crinkly plastic packing material around the room in potential hiding places, so you can hear the snake moving around.
2.  Sprinkle some flour on the floor in areas where you suspect your pet might be hiding.

•  Bring the outdoors in for a pet lizard

Your pet lizard will enjoy having fresh small tree branches in his cage. Lizards like to climb and hang out on the branches that you can collect from the garden.

•  Lazy lizards

Caged lizards like to relax, so make your pet a little hammock. String a section of old pillowcase or a bandana between two corners of the cage and you will soon see your lizard resting comfortably in his new piece of furniture.

•  A reptile cage catch-all

Keep the area around a reptile’s cage neat by placing an old plastic shower curtain or plastic tablecloth beneath the cage. When it’s time to tidy up, bundle up the plastic liner, brush sand or crumbs or any other bits of rubbish into the bin and then wipe the liner with a sponge before returning it to its original spot.

•  Give rabbits plenty of paper

A pet bunny with something to burrow into will be a happy one. Offer your rabbit shredded newspaper, crumpled-up phone book pages or other similar paper, placing it in the bottom of his cage so that he can dig away.

•  A cardboard hidey-hole for a bunny

Rabbits enjoy the comfort of a ‘cave’. Remove the lid from a cardboard box and cut out a door shape. Turn the box upside down in the rabbit cage and your pet will use it as a cosy hideaway.

•  A roll to gnaw on

Almost all pet animals — dogs, cats, rabbits, mice, guinea pigs, ferrets — enjoy gnawing on an empty cardboard roll. So do some birds, such as cockatiels. Put some rolls aside for your pets. They also like to gnaw on cardboard tissue boxes, but remember to remove the plastic liner attached to tissue boxes’ dispensing slots.

•  A healthy home for guinea pigs

Guinea pigs need lots of exercise, so it’s important that they have a big cage, but they also need to have a few ‘destinations’ within a large cage in order to get that much-needed exercise. The easiest way to do this is to put in a sturdy, small cardboard box with a couple of holes for entry and exit. A large plastic or cardboard tube is also great for encouraging exercise. By doing this — and providing plenty of fresh green grass and vegetables for vitamin C —your guinea pigs will be able to run around within their new home and eat well, resulting in good health and a longer life.

•  Nibble, nibble, nibble

Most pet rodents enjoy chew toys, which can end up being ridiculously expensive. But you can provide just as much munching pleasure for free. As well as all those empty cardboard rolls and small cardboard boxes, give your nibblers small blocks of wood left over from carpentry projects. Caution: never give rodents treated wood to chew on as it could be toxic.

• Make a tube-sock tail wrap

Rather than buying a tail wrap, make one from a length of elasticized tubular bandaging, or Tubigrip (available from pharmacies) — a cost-effective way to protect your horse’s tail on your way to a show. Here’s how:

1. On each side of the tube’s cuff, cut a strip that will remain attached — each one about 8cm long and 2cm wide.

2. Braid your horse’s tail and slip the tube sock over it.

3. Interlace one of the loose tube-sock strips with the top of the braid, then tie the second sock strip to the first one, knotting it tightly, to keep the tube sock in place.

• A simple cure for rain rots

Rain scald, or rain rot, is a common skin infection affecting horses, particularly in winter when their skin stays wet for long periods of time. After giving the affected area a good brushing, apply iodine solution (available from pharmacies and some supermarkets) to the scabs, leave it on for a few minutes, then rinse off. Repeat a few times a week until the condition clears up. Don’t blanket your horse while he’s being treated for rain rot. Caution: keep iodine away from the horses’ eyes, and consult a vet if the infection doesn’t clear up within 2 weeks as your horse may require antibiotic therapy.

•  Shine her up

After hosing off your horse, sponge on a solution of white vinegar and water (1 part vinegar to 10 parts water). This simple mixture will remove soap residue, help to repel flies and also shine up her coat.

•  Alternatives to expensive hoof dressing

Keeping a horse’s hooves in good condition is essential to his wellbeing. Like human nail tissue, hooves are made of keratin and need to be nourished to prevent cracking and splitting. There are plenty of commercial hoof products available on the market, but here are three dressings you probably already have at home:

1.  Margarine
2.  Olive oil cooking spray
3.  WD-40

In cold areas, it’s important to apply dressing to the hooves to prevent snow freezing in a hoof. This makes it hard for a galloping horse to place its feet flat on the ground, often leading to sprains. Just remember that any of these dressings may make the hoof and shoe slippery, so make sure you don’t apply too much in winter too frequently,

•  Deter flies and other insects

Keep flies away from your horse’s eyes by mixing together a few drops of any of the following oils: tea-tree, eucalyptus oil, lavender or citronella. Dab a cotton wool ball in the oil mix and wipe along your horse’s cheeks and forehead, then watch the flies flee! Another great remedy is to feed your horse garlic so that his garlic breath drives away insect pests.

•  Shine up metal parts of a saddle

Clean and polish your horse’s chrome bits, buckles and straps with toothpaste. This handy and inexpensive polish works wonders on the shiny parts of a saddle.

•  Saddle smarts

When you take apart your saddle for cleaning, it’s easy to forget which stirrup strap is left and which is right. Take two empty toilet-paper tubes and mark one Left, one Right. As you remove each strap, lace the strap through the correct paper tube and buckle it. And remember to rotate your stirrup leathers to prevent stretching on one side, or they’ll end up uneven.

•  Hair gel keeps manes tidy

Forget fancy grooming techniques and tools; if hair gel works for you, it will work for your horse, too. Use a dollop to make braiding easy and to keep stray hairs from popping out of place on show day. A bit of hairspray will tame stray hairs, too.

•  Smear stalls with chilli to stop chewing

To keep stalls from being chewed on by nickering nags, simply wipe some hot chilli paste, hot mustard or wasabi paste onto the stall. Horses hate the taste of anything hot and spicy, so they will leave the wood alone.