The Scoop about Poop: Everything you ever wanted to know about Bird Poop (and then some)

I get asked quite constantly about if the birds in my house, like Sev and Stormfly, are bathroom trained, and how I keep them from pooping on everything. I figured, with the frequency of this question, that it was about time for a down and dirty post about bird poop.

TLDR: Birds can be bathroom trained! With some caveats and complications

Birds poop, a lot. If you have birds, you are familiar with the fact it feels like a constant. From an evolutionary standpoint it makes sense – everything about most birds is tailored to the fact they need to be streamlined for flight, which means carrying as little extra weight as possible. Birds have very fast metabolisms, they’re basically little eating and pooping machines. 

Exactly how frequently they poop depends on the species. Little birds like finches or budgies will go every 10-15 minutes (upwards of a hundred times a day), larger birds like parrots it may be only 15 or 20 times a day, about every half an hour or so. This of course changes throughout the day – moreso after they’ve had a large meal, less at night. Some birds will hold poop throughout the night while sleeping, others will wake up to take infrequent bathroom breaks. Birds that forage all day poop pretty constantly, birds like raptors who may have only one large meal a day will go for longer stretches without.

Basically, what this means is that raptors, in general, are a little bit easier to deal with re:poop, in the sense they poop less frequently than a small parrot, and more predictably (i.e more after eating, when becoming active again after sitting still for a long time, before they plan to fly,etc.) The results, though, are correspondingly larger and messier. Some little birds like finches produce nearly dry little pellets which are easily cleaned – raptor poo is usually more like a tarry slurry waiting to stain and cement to anything it touches. Some species, like hawks and eagles, ‘slice’ – eject poop a long distance (over six feet, reported up to twelve) at high velocity. This behavior, important to keep a nest from becoming dirty, is carried over into adults and means every act of pooping can become quite a spectacle. Not fun to scrub off the walls (and ceilings) of outdoor enclosures and not particularly conducive to having in your home. 

As a bird keeper, you get amazingly used to poop, and learning to observe and ‘read’ it is an important part of monitoring their medical health. 

Potty training birds: 

All birds can technically be potty trained – in general it’s similar to positive reinforcement dog bathroom training. You learn the signs that a bird is going to poop (often a shuffling of the feet, body posture, and slight raising of the tail) and catch the action. You reward the bird for doing what it does naturally and establish a verbal cue like ‘go potty’ or ‘bombs away!’. When the bird understands the cue, you can move them to an appropriate space like a litter pan or newspapers. You have to be aware and consistent about this, moving your bird (possibly every 15-20 minutes) to an appropriate place and asking them to poop. Some birds will get in the habit of seeking out these materials in case it produces a reward. You are asking them to build more of an awareness of a behavior that they usually would pay little to no attention to, but it is certainly possible.

There is a big potential risk in potty training birds, though. Their bodies aren’t built to ‘hold’ it, and they can make themselves severely ill (like a potential prolapse or life-threatening kidney damage) if they become neurotic about finding the right space or waiting for a command (for instance if traveling, in a new situation, or just somewhere they can’t find where they need to ‘go’), or if they fear punishment for making a ‘mistake’. You have to be very careful to work with and watch your individual bird and have an expectation for more of a ‘potty training light’ sort of outcome; that your bird will eliminate on cue when asked, and that it’s your responsibility to keep a schedule of when they need to go, and never punish the bird if *you* make a mistake and don’t notice and catch it beforehand. 

To some extent, when living with birds, you have to just accept that they are going to poop on things. They aren’t area-habitual like dogs or cats. Having easily washable floors like hardwood or linoleum, keeping newspaper or tarps down in all bird areas, not having carpet, putting down easily washable rugs, etc are all important parts of birds in the home. And just cleaning.. a lot and lot of cleaning! 

Sev, to some extent, has partially bathroom trained himself. Since he’s still a baby I haven’t pushed him much (babies have less awareness/control than adult birds), just mild rewarding when he poops in an appropriate place. He does know, though, that he gets removed off of me or away from a ‘fun’ place if he poops somewhere he shouldn’t (like on me or on one of our washable rugs). This isn’t meant as a punishment, I just remove him to clean, but it acts like one in terms of learning because it ends something he enjoys (sitting on me/playing in the living room, etc). He’s smart enough that, on his own, he’s started taking himself to the kitchen or over to his towel-covered chair, most of the time, then coming back to what he was doing.  It is also fairly easy to have Sev in the house before he’s had a big meal, when he is pooping more infrequently. 

Some interesting facts about bird poop!

-Birds don’t fart! They don’t carry the types of gut bacteria which produce gas, have short digestive tracts and lack of digestive fermentation. Birds get rid of fecal matter, and any possibly accumulating gasses so quickly they never build up any sort of ‘fart’. 

-Birds don’t produce urine, they excrete uric acid along with fecal matter, which is the ‘white paste’ part of bird poop. This is beneficial in that it wastes much less water than urine does. Birds have combined what we mammals have as two separate digestive channels into one, exiting via the cloaca – one hole for all functions. Some species of birds (like vultures) can excrete just the ‘whitewash’ part of this separately, and use it for actions like cooling their legs (a process is called urohydrosis, and I’ll cover it in its own post!). 

-Birds’ chaotic manner of pooping all over (instead of a set, routine place) in the wild is an important way many seeds are spread, and an important source of guano/fertilizer for plants. 

-More than just owls cast (‘puke up’) pellets. All raptors regurgitate pellets made of fur and other undigestible bits of prey. Birds have a special digestive organ called a gizzard, which is where the pellet forms in raptors. This separates out the ‘junk’ so it doesn’t interfere with nutrient absorption while passing through their short digestive tracts.