Cockatiel Poop

Cockatiel Poop information for pet bird care.

When your cockatiel bird gets sick, it won't take much for their health to deteriorate rather fast. A bird doesn't just die, except in rare cases when they have an accident or drown in water, which unfortunately is a common occurrence. For the right pet bird care you need to understand how you can monitor the health of your cockatiel on a daily basis through the color of their poop.

Learning how to recognize the symptoms of ill health should be your main priority the moment you buy a pet cockatiel. With the right cockatiel care your bird has the potential to live up to 20 years. In some instances even longer. This is a long time and therefore requires the right handling from you.

Cockatiel Poop

The best way to see whether your bird is sick or healthy is by monitoring their droppings. Once you know how normal droppings look like, you will easily be able to recognize changes in color, odor, consistency or amount. A good way to see this is by using newspaper at the bottom of their cage. Change the paper regularly, at least 3 times per week. We were fortunate enough to save the life of one of our cockatiels after she had lead poisoning (she chewed paint of the wall).

If it weren't for the fact that we did some research on the Internet, our little princess would no longer be with us today. In fact, it is her picture that graces the top of this website. 

Most bird poop or droppings consist of three components. Urine consists of two of the components, mainly:

1. A crystal urine called urates (white chalky material).
2. A non-crystal urine called urine (clear water).

It is possible that sometimes the two types of urine are mixed, creating a cloudy white urine instead. Look at the color of your birds urine to determine whether it is sick or healthy.

The third component of your cockatiel's poop is the feces. The feces comes directly from the bird's colon and contains food that is digested. Depending on the type of food your pet bird ate, the color varies.

• Green: Produced by seed and green vegetables.
• Red: Stems from red pellets and red foods such as strawberries.
• Black: Is usually triggered by eating blueberries or blackberries.

 Your birds feces should be solid and tubular, worm like. Please note that after they take a bath, their poop is usually runny like water. This is no reason for concern as water gets into their system from behind. Feces can also be coiled or uncoiled and sometimes they are broken too.

A healthy cockatiel usually has green/white droppings. The following are signs of illness in your bird and the moment you see this you need to take them ASAP to your veterinary surgeon. The sooner you act, the higher likely you save your birds life.

• Brown and chocolate colored urates: Lead poisoning.
• Green or yellow urates: Liver disease.
• Increased urates: Dehydration.
• Red urates or urine: Internal bleeding.
• Increased urine: Disease/Eating foods high in water/Drinking excessively.

If the fecal material of your pet cockatiel doesn't hold its shape it means that it has diarrhea.

Another possible problem is melena. If your bird has melena, it will produce black poop which is caused by bleeding high up in the digestive system. In short, if you are not entirely sure that your pet bird produces healthy droppings, take it to a vet. We can't stress enough how important it is to act fast if you see anything out of the ordinary.

Get into the habit of looking at your cockatiel's poop every single day. Soon enough you will become a lot more comfortable in analyzing what's right and what's not.

Monitoring your cockatiel's poop is essential for a healthy and long living pet bird!