Yes, let’s talk about bird poop. Not about a pigeon pooped on me kind of story, although I’m sure there’s plenty of good stories to tell about birds pooping on people. According to my aunt it’s a sign of luck to be pooped on by a bird. I prefer to stay clean.
No, I’d like to talk about my pet birds. Two lovely lovebirds, but one got an egg stuck and had to undergo operation. It was a scary thing to have a little bird cut open and her uterus removed, but as she otherwise would continue to lay eggs, it seemed like the best option.
A stuck egg can happen in the wild, but it’s rare since the birds have their ‘wings’ full with finding a good nest and keeping it. Fighting of rivals and predators is a major concern and prevents them from nesting. Its nature and honestly I would never keep a bird in the house if one of my aunts wasn’t so desperate to get rid of them. These are born inhouse, therefore setting them free in the wild is a risk. Here they can fly through the house whenever I’m at home.
Back to the pooping. The pooping everywhere quickly became an issue. After weeks of training and a whole lot of patience from my side, I conditioned both birds to poop inside the cage only.
However the one that got a stuck egg was starting to poop big. Like, large poops. It would actually shoot out of her feathered bump. At first I thought it was due to her eating a lot, but when I came to the doctor to have her undergo surgery, he told me big poops like that are a sign somethings is wrong. The cloaca, where the poop accumulates, can’t get rid of the content until its overfull and it shoots out. Sometimes it can drip also. Who would have thought that it’s so important to look at the way a bird poops?
After surgery the pooping was changed for a while. She went back to normal small poops like her lovebird partner. However, a few weeks later she is back to the really large poops. This time I won’t let it drag on. Time to see the doctor again and find out what’s going on.