Growing up with a father that loved birds and who raced homing pigeons, both my sister and I learned at very young ages to love birds and both became bird owners. Similar to mammals, birds can have bacterial infections, cancer, and hormonal disorders. Which might explain the PMS attitude my little Wahoo - parakeet - gets periodically and wants to do nothing but bite. Birds may not show signs of disease until they are really quite sick. Knowing what diseases are common in your species of birds will help you more easily identify signs that your bird may be ill.Since birds are closer to the wild state than most other pets, and are often the prey of other animals, they are good at masking signs of illness. Unfortunately, this may delay diagnosis of problems, so bird owners must be creative in observing their bird's condition. One quick health indicator is a bird's droppings. Daily inspection of cage papers may be able to tell you if your bird is stressed or becoming ill, alerting you in timely fashion to the need for corrective care.
The digestive system of your bird is physically simple and efficient. From consumption to elimination, the digestive process takes less than a day -- thus droppings can provide you with information you can correlate with recent meals, activities, or events. Become familiar with the appearance of your bird's normal droppings, and if something is amiss, you can quickly spot abnormalities and bring them to your veterinarian's attention.
The droppings of each species vary and factors such as diet and age also come into play especially if you are feeding them fresh fruits like blueberries or blackberries. Frequent elimination is normal and inspection of droppings over several days will define what is normal for your particular bird. Other characteristics of normal droppings are the feces should be odorless. The urine should be clear. Feces should be firm and dark brown or green in color, depending upon the species of bird and the diet. If the staple diet is seed, feces will be dark green; while if the staple diet is pelleted food, it will take on the color of the pellets. When feces dry, they often look black.
Some abnormal signs are feces light in color, mustard yellow, rusty brown, or containing blood and urine with any color at all. Also unusually large feces or feces that are coarse-textured, watery, or mushy and feces that contain undigested food or have a foul odor. If changes in droppings do occur, be on the lookout for other telltale signs of illness such as not eating, lethargy, sitting low or huddled, with or without ruffled feathers, and rattled, wheezy, or open-mouth breathing. If your bird exhibits any of these symptoms, contact your avian veterinarian immediately. If you need to take your bird in for an exam, be sure to bring along the cage papers, so the veterinarian can examine the droppings, as well.
