Water Bottle Cleanliness

I'm often amazed when people bring in animals to surrender to the rescue... how dirty the water bottles are.

Let me explain why.  With the exception of chins that are sick and chins that manage to stuff something up the tube of their water bottle.... most water bottles here are cleaned monthly.  They are all removed at the beginning of the month, washed, refilled, and replaced.  Obviously, for sick animals or animals getting stuff in their bottles, they are swapped out for a clean bottle before that.  But other than the tops of the bottles being dusty, we have never had algae growing in a bottle, we have never had one with so much coloration from the water that the bottle turned a different color.

This was awhile back, but I ran across these pics in my phone... two bottles brought in by two different people dropping off chins.  This is how they came in:

Ick.  Do you want to drink out of those?  I don't... and I imagine, pets would rather not either.

Anyway, a little soap and water never hurt anything, so after just a quick (and I do mean quick... probably not even 2 minute scrub... total) this is what they looked like:

Amazing how much came off, right?  Yes, on the plastic water bottle, you can still see some of the reddish coloration, because plastic does hold onto that sort of thing better, but I ended up putting water and white vinegar in that bottle and letting it soak for awhile, and while I don't have a pic of the cleaned bottle... it looks even better than that.

A little scrubbing is all it takes!  Get a bottle brush or a baby brush or whatever, put some soap on it, and scrub. It's not that hard, I promise!  And the bottles look so much better and I guarantee the pets prefer drinking out of the clean bottles.  

If it took a lot of scrubbing, I wouldn't even be posting this... but just maybe 1 minute scrubbing per bottle, and they look so much better.  A little effort is all it takes!