Intestinal problem, watery poop

[liz8200]

Thanks Wolf. Have you seen that watery poop? I talked to the vet and he said he did do tests for infection. They tested the blood cells and there was not sign of infection. There was a slight rise in his lipids. The vet did not thank that was high enough to cause this problem. I am taking him tomorrow to the vet for a anal probe. It is for what you all said was a virus. It sounded like it could be the problem. I was scared yesterday because his poop looked more like diarrhea. Now I know the difference and I am so glad his Dr is putting him in during his lunch tomorrow. The Vet said it's a five minuet procedure so I'm not as worried about it being dangerous.

I am thinking that it may have been the change in diet that made his poop different.
Its hard dealing with a birds illness. Taking him out of the house to be poked and put out for tests. Now my bird really doesn't want to go. I

[Pajarita]

That is NOT watery poop. The urine stain is perfectly normal in size. When you have polyuria, the urine wet stain under the poop and urates is, at least, twice as large (the tiel with advanced liver disease had stains with diameters of about 4 to 5 inches). The only thing I noticed on that poop is that the urine is green which usually means liver disease (and it goes hand in hand with the increased lipids) so, if I were you, I would forget about the endoscopy and get a bile acids test first.

[liz8200]

I took my bird to the vet today, the Dr could not see him. His Vet is another Dr that schedules people every 10-15 minuets apart. I was 5 mins late, so I was the loser. I was very worried my bird was not going to last the weekend. It is a big deal bringing him out to the vet to begin with.

It worked out that we got a second opinion. I went to another Bird Vet that has 35 years experience. His partner was the Vet that came to the house last year and gave him the antibiotic, he was much less experienced.
The Vet assured me that he was not going to die this weekend. His Vet faxed over all the tests results. This vet looked at his chest and said he has a full breast then he showed me his skin and said it was translucent. He blew the feathers out of the way to check all this, he then looked at his anus and smelled. This Dr put a test strip in his poop.for sugar. He also said usually when a bird has the anal virus they strain extremely hard and may scream because it hurt so bad, and you can see feather plucking and poop down there. He looked at all the blood work and said everything is normal. No infection kidneys fine, liver function is good. He has ruled out everything.

This Vet has diagnosed my bird with a mental disorder. This Vet has never seen a bird with these symptoms in 35 years. My bird has had watery stools for a year. This Vet said depending on how much personality a bird has, they can have as much mental upset.

I am not convinced because with a neurotic thing he would be drinking a lot of water. I don't see that. My Cockatel drank a hole bowl full of water between daily feedings. I thought the bowl had a hole and was leaking. After a few days of the missing water and checking the bowl I figured out that she was drinking it. Then I connected the pee that she had been squirting out of the bird cage for days with the water consumption. That was crazy, I had to put a plastic sheet around the cage because she had so much force when she peed, and she peed constantly. That's the only reference I have to a bird drinking a lot of water. I'm not seeing any more water missing from his bowl. The Vet said He could have this for years.

I am thinking what may have caused this, if it where something mental. This started before 2 Christmas ago. I saw a different poop but did not think anything. I went to see my Mom and was gone for a month. My friend mentioned poop in his water for some reason he did think anything about it. I know my bird, he never poops in his water. He holds it until he moves away from the dish in the morning. He sleeps above it.

I am observing him very closely. One thing that may be unnerving him is the redevelopment around my house that's been going on for 1-2 years. They opened a bar that has bands playing in the back loud rock and roll all night. It's disturbing me. My home is quiet other than the tv and me and someone talking. I don't have many people in my house. If my bird doesn't calm down when someone comes over they have to leave. I have to put him in the cage and cover it when a repair man comes over. He fly's all over swooping over there head and screams when they come in the house. He goes nuts when anyone or cat is outside the window. I have read that the Blue crested conjures are great guard birds. It's true, he has a different scream when he sees anyone move outside.
As I am writing this I can see that it is a stressor. He does look out the front window constantly alert even when he isn't upset and there is alot of stimulation that was not there before.

[Pajarita]

Please, please, please have a bile acids test done. It's not that expensive (I pay $80 for it) but it's absolutely necessary with birds because regular blood work does NOT show a change in the liver enzyme levels until the liver is only working at 25%. I learned this the hard way when a bird I had rescued died of hepatic failure after the best and most respected avian vet in my area had told me THREE times (after three blood tests because I kept on bringing him back as he did not look well to me) that there was nothing wrong with him (this bird showed normal liver enzymes on his chem pane until less than one month before dying -I did not know about the bile acids test then).

What the vet is talking about is called psychogenic polydipsia which basically means that the bird pees a lot because it drinks a lot but not because there is a physical cause for it. It's common in puppies which drink and drink without really been that thirsty and then pee all over the place and, although they say it can happen to birds, I've never seen or heard of a case (which doesn't mean it cannot happen but that it must be rare).

He doesn't have a large output of urine... or, at least, if he does, the pictures you provided do not show this and, in my personal experience (not vast as I only had two birds with this problem), when there is polyuria, there isn't a single time they poop that there is not a large urine stain (with the tiel, the paper at the bottom of the cage would show a stain the size of roughly 12 x 8 inches and go through 4 layers of it in the morning after an entire night). What the pictures do show is that his urine is not clear and that is not caused by psychogenic polydipsia, quite the contrary, the urine is just like water because it has not chance of getting 'concentrated'.

[Wolf]

At this point, I am leaving the medical end of this to Pajarita as she is much more experienced with it than I am.
As far as the stresses caused by the construction noise as well as from the bars loud music at night. Both of these can cause your bird to stress more than it should and the loud music at night may additionally be preventing your birds from getting a good nights sleep thereby increasing the effects of the stress. If I had these conditions to deal with , I would find another place to live if I rented and if I owned my house then I would look into the possibility of adding some sound proofing to the area that the bird sleeps in and probably in other areas as well just to reduce the noise pollution. This sound proofing could be as simple as purchasing 12 X 12 inch squares of cork tiles that could be fastened to the walls and or ceiling and faced with paneling, or the more expensive route of adding insulation to all walls and adding a layer of sound proofing material to the walls and covering it with either paneling or an additional layer of sheetrock.
I also think that I would seriously consider doing a bit of socializing of my bird beginning with more frequent visitations from the people that the bird does calm down with when they are present and working up to a couple of different friends who would be understanding of the process. Both of these things could be effective in reducing the long term effects of stress that your bird may be experiencing at this time. Just my thoughts on this.

[liz8200]

I will call the vet and as for a "bile acids test". You did have a bird with these symptoms?
I am renting and thinking about moving.

[Pajarita]

I had two birds with polyuria. One, an 18 year old tiel I took in, had it atrociously severe (I had not only not ever seen anything like it, I did not even know it was possible for a little bird to pee so much- this is the one that went through 4 layers of newspapers and made a stain bigger than a sheet of paper overnight), he had both liver and kidney advanced malfunction (he was pinioned and had had a bad diet his entire life), the vet said he would not last two months when I took him to her but he lived almost 2 years with a strict diet and supplements (his polyuria got much, much better to the point that his urine output was almost normal at the end because you can make the liver better but not the kidneys and he was pretty old for a tiel). The other was a cockatoo that had an intestinal infection, she got better with antibiotics, ACV and probiotics and never had it again. I've had old birds come in with mild polyuria but they all got better after the detox protocol I put them through and a good diet afterward (my birds have very little stress and that helps A LOT). But your bird does not have polyuria, my dear.

[liz8200]

Ok when you did see polyuria the bird was peeing 4 inchs from the poop and soaking threw 4 sheets of paper. My bird is only peeing like 1/2 inch from the poop. It does not look like what you have seen. ok.
Along with getting my bird on a good diet what else should I do? Get the bile test? How do they do the bile test?
Is the apple cider vinegar a probiotic? What else? Can I use brown rice in place of the grains for the coop?

I am going to let someone new in the house with my bird. I has a few friends that my bird is used to. I like the wolf said sympathetic to what I'm doing. Most people don't like the loud screaming, and mess. That's why I don't let many people in the house. Bird people understand.
I am also working with him on biting. He bit a friend when she went to pet him. He laughed and I laughed and she got mad about it. I don't know why I laughed, but I thought it was interesting that my bird laughed before me at the same time. I don't know how he knew when to laugh, or why did he laugh when he bit her.

[Pajarita]

Exactly! There is not a large urine stain under your bird's poop and that's why I said that your bird does NOT have polyuria. But I did notice the bad color of the urine and that's why I recommended the bile acid tests (it's done from blood).

Avian vets usually use the AST values from the chem panel to determine liver disease in birds but AST are enzymes that get dumped into the blood not only by the liver but also by muscle (so an elevated number doesn't necessarily mean liver disease, it could mean other things) and they only go up when there are A LOT of dead cells BUT the liver doesn't necessarily 'kill' a large number of cells when it's sick because the way the liver 'fights' fatty liver (hepatic lipidosis) is to become larger so a bird could have perfectly good AST levels and have a liver working at 50% capacity (I read once that the AST levels only go up when the liver is working only at 25% capacity and I believe it because I had that bird that died of hepatic failure and had had good AST levels until almost the end). Bile acids, on the other hand, get elevated when the liver is not functioning right (even if the problem is only starting) and are the ONLY conclusive test you can have for liver function. I don't know why there are still avian vets who don't recommend doing this test for every single sick or old bird they see because Lord knows the liver is a parrot's weak point in captivity (bad diet, not enough exercise, etc).

Brown rice is part of the gloop recipe. I now use black japonica, red Himalayan and medium brown rice (instead of the common long brown rice). ACV is not a probiotic but it has natural enzymes in it (because it's fermented -that's why it has to be organic, unfiltered and unpasteurized -which gives it the 'mother' -a cloudy, webby thingie you can actually see) that create a fertile ground for the good bacteria necessary for proper digestion.

I would do the bile acid test to make sure everything is indeed OK (I would also do a full body XRay). But, at the same time, I would put him on a good diet because all parrots need it.

[liz8200]

thanks Pajarita, I am going to call the vet and ask for the bile acid test. Could your bird have lived if the vet diagnosed his problem?
I will keep working on his diet.
The specialist is an hour away that can do an x-ray. Is that ok for a bird to be in the car driving for that long if they are sick?
This is not going away and it's still worrying me. My bird doesn't seem as lively as he has been.