Poop is a strong indicator of your budgie’s health status. Its texture, size, and color can help tell how your feathered friend is doing. Talking about color, what color should budgie poop be for a healthy budgie?
Generally, the color of budgie poop should be green or olive green. This poop is an assortment of three components—green feces, a white-shade part called urates, and the liquid part, mostly transparent.
However, the poop color can be different among different birds. Moreover, poop color can change depending on the food you feed your budgie.
If you’re worried that something isn’t right with your budgie, considering its poop color, keep reading for more helpful information.
What Color Should Budgie Poop Be?
Generally, if you don’t see the green-whitish poop from your budgie, then further investigation is needed.
It’s tricky to know the exact poop color of a healthy budgie. But that’s not something to challenge an experienced budgie owner who’ve studied the characteristics of poop from a healthy budgie.
The characteristics can easily change due to dietary effects. Ideally, you feed your bird different food types of vegetables, fruits, seeds, or pellets. Consequently, you can’t expect the color to remain the same.
The green appearance of the droppings mainly results from your bird feeding on seed. What if you provide pellets as the primary diet? You’re likely to see a brownish tone.
That said, the main component can change color. But the urate and the urine should retain their white and clear appearances, respectively.
Notably, the color of the poop turns black once it dries. So, you want to make sure that any observations are made before the feces dry up.
What’s important is to study your budgie’s poop over time. Of course, consider the type of food you give—that should tell you the average color of your bird’s feces.
If the color you’re used to seeing changes suddenly and you never altered its diet, then there could be a problem with your bird. Seek the help of an avian veterinarian.
Also Read: Do Budgies Need Nesting Material? 3 Best Nesting Materials for Budgies
What Should Budgie Poop Look Like?
Budgie poop should look like most birds’ poop. It consists of three parts or components:
- Feces
- Urates
- Urine
The appearance of budgie poop differs from what you see in other pets like cats and dogs, as shown in the table below:
| Component | Color and Description | Source/Location in the poop |
| Fecal matter (feces), | Usually green or olive green. However, it can take the color of the food being eaten by the budgie. Sometimes it may be brown, tan, dark red, orange, or dark green. | Produced in the digestive system. It can be seen in the center of the dropping. |
| Urates | This is a creamy-whitish or chalky white material. It can also take the food color when leaching occurs from feces through the urates. Urates occur due to protein breakdown. It’s a soft solid. | Produced by the kidney. It surrounds the feces. |
| Urine | Transparent or colorless in color, urine is the third component of budgie poop. This is the liquid part. | Produced by the kidney. It’s seen as the outermost liquid part that completes poop. |
A healthy budgie should have its droppings complete with these three parts. And the three should be distinctly visible, although they come out as one mass.
The science behind feces, urate, and urine combined into a single unit begins in the bird’s cloaca.
The cloaca is a special compartment that receives waste products from the digestive system and the kidneys. It’s still the same place from which sperm and eggs depart.
Once the waste products reach this ‘store and mixer’ compartment, they combine and leave simultaneously. They’re now called droppings or poop.
So, ensure that the droppings are normal with the three parts intact. You can determine the integrity of poop by using paper on the floor of the cage. Then change it regularly to avoid waste build-up.
The paper gives you a great vision of poop. You can effortlessly see the poop’s consistency, volume, color, and frequency with which the bird defecated.
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What Are the Signs of Healthy Budgie Poop?
The signs of healthy budgie poop include green or olive green color, solid or pasty appearance, medium-sized, and frequently expelled.
The color, as indicated, is generally green or olive green, but it could be anything else depending on the diet you give the birds. If, for example, you feed your budgie a mix of green, brown, and red treats, don’t be surprised to see such colors in its poop.
Let’s now discuss the signs of healthy budgie poop.
Consistency
The consistency or texture of budgie poop should have a solid or pasty loo with distinct white urates.
When droppings come out, they should be identical and remain intact. They should not fall apart because of a watery consistency. Even if they’re a bit soft, the shape should remain unchanged.
Runny feces indicate your budgie is not doing fine. There’s an underlying issue.
On the same note, the poop should not be extremely dry and crumbly. The correct texture is a soft, toothpaste-like poop that retains shape even after it’s dropped.
Size
As a whole, budgie poop isn’t as big. The birds themselves are small, and they expel small-sized poops.
If you have a smaller budgie, expect small droppings. Otherwise, expect a bit larger poops from bigger budgie species like those of English origin.
Any unusual poop size can be a sign of a health problem. So, be keen to check on what your budgie expels as droppings.
The bottom line is that poop size can vary depending on a bird’s size.
Frequency
How often your budgie expels poop is also crucial for assessing its health. On average, the budgie should poop 40-50 times daily. The interval is after 12-15 minutes.
That said, the pooping frequency may also be determined by diet and the type of budgie you have. Budgies still poop, even when they sleep.
Is that surprising? Is it familiar? Well, there are reasons for these frequent excretions.
- Budgies experience high metabolism rates. Hence, they need food after a very short time. So they excrete to create space for more digestion.
- In the wild, budgies must always remain lightweight for an easy escape when predators knock at their door. So, they expel as much feces as possible to remain in good shape.
- Given their small bodies, budgies will poop more in a day than larger birds. Generally, the frequency with which a bird poops is correlated to its body size.
The three characteristics should tell you whether your bird is healthy or has some underlying conditions that should be treated urgently.
What Should Budgie Poop Smell Like?
Budgie poop should only have a little smell or no smell at all. Budgies have a unique diet that consists of seeds, fruits, and vegetables with pelleted foods. These are not associated with strong pungent smells.
They don’t eat meat, the main source of sulfur compounds that can produce an odor in poop.
Besides, birds don’t have anal glands common in dogs and cats and are responsible for producing foul smells.
Moreover, your budgies lack a cecum. Cecum is an internal organ in the digestive system of animals that helps ferment food, hence, the smelling gas.
Given your budgie has none of the mentioned organs in its gut, there are less chances of its poop smelling. Not unless the gut, and mostly the intestines, is infected by a pathogen. If that’s the case, make sure to contact your veterinarian for checks and diagnosis.
How do you know budgie poop smells? It will smell as you move close to its cage when cleaning. Don’t smell the poop close to your nose. You may inhale harmful particles containing pathogens.
That said, budgie poop cannot smell like other animals’ feces, such as dogs and cats.
A Must Read: Why Is My Budgie Panting? 6 Main Reasons
Is Budgie Yellow Poop Normal?
Budgie yellow poop is not normal, at least considering which colors of poop are expected. If you see it persisting for days, there’s a serious underlying condition. And chances are:
- Your bird is not eating food – a condition called anorexia
- It’s a liver disease – common in obese birds
- It’s Chlamydia – a bacterial infection
Don’t hesitate to visit an avian-oriented veterinarian immediately. All these are cases of great concern and should be evaluated and treated urgently.
Note that the urates may assume the color of the feces in poop. This is because the leaching of color can stream from fecal components into the urates.
So yellow urates are still a sign of the three conditions mentioned above. The same applies to a yellowish tinge or urine.
For some reason, you may want to associate the yellow color with the foods you gave your budgie. That’s okay, but only if the poop takes other colors except yellow, bright green, bright red, and black tarry.
Food-induced colors in feces include dark green to show the bird has eaten enough seed. Uncolored pellets make the bird produce tan or brown feces.
You’ll see orange feces if you’ve given your budgie plenty of baked sweet potatoes and carrots. And when your budgie takes in blueberries, cherries, and pomegranates, you’ll see dark red or purple feces, which is fine.
Many budgie owners may find dark red a scary color for budgie poop. So, they end up fumbling for help. However, there is no serious underlying concern but the effect of the blueberry pigments.
Having stayed with your budgie for a long time, you should already know the color of its poop. Seeing yellow poop could raise your anxiety.
When you see yellow instead of the mentioned normal colors, inform your avian veterinarian immediately for diagnosis and treatment.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why Isn’t My Bird Pooping?
Your bird isn’t pooping because of a blockage due to situations like an egg for a female bird or a foreign body stuck in the gastrointestinal tract. Moreover, although rare, your bird could be constipated.
How do I know if my budgie is constipated?
You can know if your budgie is constipated by examining its droppings and how it excretes. A budgie that strains while relieving itself is a constipated one. Moreover, the poop will appear dry and may contain traces of blood.
Why is my bird having watery poop?
Your bird is having watery poop due to an intestinal infection or parasite, a poor diet, or stress. The problem may also arise from a change in diet. Therefore, if you must change your budgie’s diet, do so gradually to allow the bird’s system to get used to the new diet.
Final Thoughts
Understanding what color budgie poop should be is essential for the health and well-being of your feathered friend.
Keeping an eye on your budgie’s droppings can provide valuable insight into their overall health and help catch any potential issues early on.
Besides following the tips shared here, remember to consult your veterinarian for a happy and healthy budgie.
