Abnormal CAG droppings, Anyone experience?

[Moobu]

Firstly I know he has some form of mild infection. He has been to the vet for this and is currently on an antibiotic. The story goes as follows:

 

About 6 months ago I expanded my flock of 3 by answering an ad in the local paper for a Nanday Conure. The woman selling him had absolutely NO experience with birds in the past and inherited a love bird, a nanday conure, and about 10 budgies from her father's passing. Even though she meant well her lack of knowledge caused the conure, who I renamed Onyx upon rescuing him, to get sick by leaving fruit in his cage for DAYS at a time. (He has also since been seen by the local vet)

 

The symptoms of this supposed sickness are simple. Extremely large excretes of droppings at one time. Its best described like he holds in a few hours worth just to let it all out at once as a few moments after you take him from his cage. The volume is enough where it isn't uncommon for a squirting kind of sound to accompany the excretion. I would say its consistency is 50/50% watery solid. Other than this excessive amount of droppings Onyx is very active, social, loving, playful, destructive (with his rope toys of course), loud, and every other word you can think to use for a textbook Conure.

 

He had a fecal smear test conducted which revealed an imbalance of negative bacteria in his stool when taken to the vet. This led to him being on two different regiments of the antibiotic Baytril. This medication has drastically reduced the volume of droppings, but they seem to stay the same consistency and are slightly varying in terms of current volume. My vet told me maybe he needs time to heal but he isn't really sure.

 

Now that the back story is presented..

 

Barney is my 26 year old Congo African Grey I just recently purchased about 3 months ago with his unofficial brother Linus(21 years old. Barney has now started excreting droppings in the same excessive fashion that Onyx originally was. He usually has 2 medium sized incidents about 3-5 seconds apart. He also wiggles his back end widely and crouches down when he goes.

 

I'd like to point out that after the first time either bird releases a larger amount of droppings, they seem to have smaller, to normal sized droppings for about an hour. They also seem to go at an accelerated rate. The Conure was timed to be going about every 7-10 minutes.

 

Finally, I'd like to point it out again that both birds show no other symptoms of being sick. Both are very energetic and eager to come out and train, play, socialize with the family, and neither have shown any differing characteristics in personality.

[Char]

Whisper wiggles and crouches down so that is normal. If you have seen a change in Barney then he needs to go to the vet also. Is your vet an avian vet?

 

Also, did the conure have a culture and sensitivity done to be sure the antibiotic was the right one for his infection. It is possible that you have transferred the infection to Barney. If any way possible I would get the whole flock checked out.

[she]

If you are concerned, have them all checked by an avian vet .Greys do hold droppings in for ages and then expell a hugh amount.My grey often does this of a night. The consistancy of droppings and the colour can change depending on what they have been eating,watery fruit means watery droppings.

[Dave007]

AS far as what your grey is doing, there's nothing abnormal going on. Most greys hold their droppings in through the night when sleeping and the first one in the morning is very large, gloppy, greenish colored and comes out looking like diahrea. Eventually, that first bowel movement solidifies. The nest 2 droppings are similar but smaller in size and more solid. For the rest of the day, droppings are very small and that's when the urates can also be seenm. Almost all greys wiggle their tail for about 5 seconds before they go. They also crouch down at the same time.

3 to 5 seconds apart isn't abnormal just like 3 to 25 seconds isn't abnormal. It's just the way the bird's excretions work. You may have 2 greys but that doesn't mean that their excretions are the same.

 

Baytril----is a broad spectrum antibiotic which is used for many things. In certain problems, it takes longer for a particular problem to get corrected even if Baytril is being used.

 

Conures are also different from each other. They too may have a large amount of droppings in the morning and as the day goes on, the dropping become smaller and less frequent. The big problem to look for is the all day behavior of a comure or other species when internaldigestive excretion type problems are present. If you say that after the droppings are expelled, the bird acts normally all day, there isn't a problem.

 

As far as timing--an active grey lets go of a dropping every 35 to 50 minutes.

I'm not sure of the timing of a conure so I can only say that if he goes back to his normal playful day, there is no problem.

 

One other thing---although you didn't say it, if you took those budgies with you and have the conure mixed in with them, there will be problems if the conure eats the droppings of the budgies. Budgies droppings are totally different and can cause digestive problems so if you have them together, separate them.

[Moobu]

Everyone is in separate cages. I had the conure cultured by my local avian vet which is how we arrived to the conclusion he had an imbalance of negative bacteria in his stool.

 

I'm fairly positive I transferred this to Barney from Onyx because I have a portable stand perch that I keep all birds on when they are out. (one at a time, or CAG pair and Conure/cockatiel pair) Barney and Onyx both have a history of chewing their droppings paper through their grates which is why I had to change over to aspen wood pellet bedding. I'm almost certain this is how Barney could have caught something from Onyx.

 

Dave, is it normal for this excessive amount to occur frequently throughout the day? It seems to happen ever few hours if not sooner. In regards to my Conure's timing, its about twice as fast as my cockatiel's which I feel seems unnatural. I would also like to guesstimate Barney goes at least every 25-30. My main concern here is long term impacts on both of their health at this point.

[Dave007]

The amount of each dropping doesn't mean that the bird is sick but I will tell you something that will make your birds sick. If your birds are allowed to go to the bottom of a cage and eat the droppings, possible infections or digestive problems could occur. Most of the time, cedar shavings aren't recommended but I'm not totally against them as long as some type of grating is used that will not allow the bird to go down there. Another reason that themost popular covering in a try is newspaper because in case there's any type of blood that may drip out for loads of reasons, the blood can be easily seen on newspaper. ASnother reason that cedar isn't recommended is because it gives off dust that can rise up and affect the nasal passages of a bird. My opinion is plain newspaper and if you're worried about a bird eating the newspaper which they normally don't do, I can say that the type of ink that is now used in newspaper is not toxic anymore. That was changed about approx 15 yrs ago. Birds do like to get to the newspaperand shred it which isn't harmful. Cedar shaving are best used with out wild birds that build nests innest boxes. Those birds are usually small types.--chickadees, titmioce, buntings,house sparrows gold finches azure buntings etc.

[Moobu]

Thanks for the tips about the choice about the wood. What I am using isn't actually a shaving as far as I know. At least not the finished product. It is a condensed wood pellet. The entire reason i changed from news paper to these wood pellets was because Barney and Onyx were reaching through their grates and chewing the paper to pieces. I changed to help eliminate the possibility of digesting their own droppings. Here is a link to the product, is this what you meant when you referred to wood shavings? http://www.greenpet.com/prodaspen.htm