Parrots Poop (Normal vs. Abnormal)

For owners with little to no expertise in raising pet parrots and toward getting better at raising them. They should understand that their lovely pets are prone to many illnesses and health problems, and the best way to handle this is to work on prevention.

And one crucial way to prevent such problems is to always observe the parrots’ poop any time you are close to the cage or when you are cleaning the cage.

Of course, the fresh the defecation is the better to determine if there is anything wrong with the bird, and in this article, we will reveal what owners should look for to distinguish healthy and unhealthy feces of their parrots.

Why It’s Important To Observe The Poop

You might wonder why exactly parrots poop to check and observe, and the answer is that parrots poop can give owners important indications about the general health of the bird, and sometimes this is crucial in saving your bird’s life as the feces may show early symptoms of sickness that require immediate medical care.

These diseases can include:

• Chlamydia psittaci
• Diarrhea
• Constipation
• A rupture of the intestine
• A tear around the parrot’s anus
• Internal damage to the lining of the stomach
• Proventricular dilatation disease (PDD)
• Internal bleeding
• liver damage
• Giardia duodenalis

As you see, some of them can take the life of the bird if there was no immediate intervention to help and treat it. Some of these diseases are silent, which means that the bird will suffer in silence until it dies.

How Does Healthy Parrot’s Poop Look Like?

To Understand the patterns of parrot poop, we need to divide the poop into 3 parts:

• Green: Fecal Matter
• White: urate a form of solid urine
• Colorless liquid: normal urine like in mammals

Birds in general tend to preserve water more than mammals, and this leads to the formation of urate, which is basically solid urine. However, urine comes out with the stool as well, in the shape of colorless liquid.

This mix is what the body of parrots produces as feces, and there is no separate way to defecate urine and fecal matter, and they all drop out at once.

So, these 3 parts always come out together, and while the green and white matter resembles poop and urine and should always be relatively equal to each other. For the colorless liquid, it should be enough to form a circle around the dropping itself, and the lack of it can indicate constipation or dehydration.

The best thing to use is tissues or newspapers under the parrot to observe the droppings and to easily clean if necessary. You also must check when they are relatively fresh.

So, green poop, white urate, and colorless liquid are natural and indicate good health.

Besides that, a Tube-like shape stool is healthy, it should be short and tubular. It also should be relatively solid in texture and grassy green or green olive green.

How Does Abnormal Poop Look Like?

Bad poop can happen in different ways regarding coloration or the shape of the feces. However, extra watery poop can indicate that the parrot has eaten some extra fruits and juicy veggies, and it’s normal to notice a slight change in the stool. If it continues, then it is probably diarrhea.

If the bird ate seeds and nuts, the stool will normally come out more solid.

How solid the poop should be? The answer is solid like toothpaste to the extent of preserving its shape until it gets dry.

Apart from that, many abnormalities can appear to parrot poop and these may include:

• relatively Strong foul smell
• Big in Quantity
• Watery stool
• Contains Undigested food

With mentioning the normal coloration of the stool above, let’s discuss what other coloration could appear.

Red, Brown, or Black

These 3 colors normally indicate that there is bleeding inside the parrot’s body. However, sometimes the redness in the stool is expected only if the bird has eaten something red like beetroot, other than that it could be:

• infection
• A rupture of the intestine
• A tear around the parrot’s anus
• Internal damage to the lining of the stomach

Pale green

The pale green is also a bad sign and it might require medical care, and this color could appear in the stool along with other symptoms like:

• tiredness
• Rejection of food
• The feathers will look wet or sticky

This color can indicate problems with the pancreas or other organs of the digestive system.

Yellow

This, in my opinion, is the worst color that could be found in a parrot stool and it is normally a sign of Proventricular dilatation disease (PDD) and Chlamydia psittaci.

If you see a yellow stool, then you have to go to the avian vet for medical assistance.

These colors are the most common with sick parrots and they appear on the fecal matter of the droppings. Some other signs could appear with solid and liquid urine, and these problems may include:

• Green or yellow urine: This color indicates liver disease.
• Green or yellow urate: This usually means liver disease or loss of appetite.
• Brown urine: Brown urine can be due to lead poisoning.
• Red Urate: Red urate can indicate kidney disease or internal bleeding.
• Red urine: If you see red urine, it usually means internal bleeding in the lower half of the digestive tract.

How Much Poop Is Normal?

The size of the stool differs from type to type, and to know if the bird stool is normal, you must observe the first while the bird is eating and living healthily. You can do that when you:

• Cleaning the cage
• When you change the diet
• when the parrot is sick

These 3 times are ideal to know how much stool is normal for the bird breed you have and knowing this, you can determine if the bird is suffering from sickness with more accuracy.

You can also observe to know the normal shape and color of the bird so you can detect any changes.

Sometimes parrot poop will be less than normal and the reasons could be constipation or lack of food.

FAQ

Conclusion

In conclusion, observing the parrot’s poop on a daily basis will help the owner to protect his pet and prevent any upcoming problems just by distinguishing between healthy and unhealthy defecation. understanding the healthy defecation pattern of a pet parrot will also lead the owner to know if there is something wrong with the bird, and also can help to know how different foods are affecting the internal parts of the bird’s body.

Remember that black and red poop could be an indication of something that might pose a threat to the life of a bird, and in most cases, other symptoms will appear along with the red or black poop, so if you notice something like that take the bird to an avian vet as quickly as possible you don’t want to risk your bird’s.

And yup. that’s about it. I hope you found this article informative and easy to digest. Thank you for reading…

Sadeq

Hello, my name is sadeq and I am obsessed about parrot And I am here to share everything about raising pet parrots and how to be good owners to your bird.