What do I do with a pile of wood thats green and nasty? Well, you can give it to your degus of course! But lets clean it first eh? Luckily, in my line of work, I meet lots of different people - including many gardeners. These gardeners are nice enough to bring me their stumps and branches free of charge. Some require cleaning, some do not. In this example, the wood I am cleaning has been left to rot for a couple of months. Read after the break to see how I cleaned this wood. So as you can see, we have a varied collection. Some peices are thick enough to stand upright for the degus to perch on, others I can use to decorate the enclosure or bridge gaps between ledges.
Bash and/or shake the wood to remove loose debris, now take some sand paper or a rough bristle brush and brush away further debris. Now you will want to get the wood wet again, I place the wood into a bucket of warm water with fairy liquid. I then proceed to scrub the wood with a scouring spounge, the goal is to remove the green fungal infection. This may take some time depending on the size of the piece. After the wood is clean, carefully rinse it with boiling water to remove any final debris and kill any bacteria or parasites living in the wood. Be sure to rinse off the fairy liquid too. I boiled 5 kettles worth of water to remove all the excess. At this stage you need to dry your wood again. You could place it in the airing cupboard / boiler cupboard or somewhere equally hot and dry. I decided to bake mine however. This step is dangerous, so be sure to seek out parental supervision (you too adults!). Remove all baking trays from the oven to maximise space and place a single piece of wood in the oven. You will want to observe carefully, your wood will begin to smoke, but will not set fire quickly. Bake the wood on a setting somewhere around 150°C to 200°C. You will need to use best judgement for this bit, but you will probably want to remove the wood after 10 minutes but not later than 20. Use oven gloves to pick up your wood - its really hot (you think?) !!!
If you have done this properly, the top of the stump will have changed from a creamy wood colour to a golden brown - as you can see below. As you can also see below the stump is now much cleaner. I hope you enjoy and I hope your degus enjoy even more! Remember to be safe! Thanks for reading folks, till next time! Next
2 Comments
7/22/2012 07:58:45 pm
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