Conure is Crying

Maerow

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Dec 11, 2018
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Hi everyone,

:green1:


So I have a bit of a problem. I have a 10 year old green cheek conure named Holly, and she is driving me bananas. We have a good relationship, but she has a serious problem with bedtime. My husband and I are night owls, and we have our computers stationed together downstairs. We used to have her upstairs, but spent most of our time downstairs, and so moved her cage so she would spend the majority of her time with us. The problem came at night. We would cover her cage but still be talking and typing, and she would hear us and cry.

It's the saddest sound in the world and she was very persistant, to the point of insanity. So we compromised and bought her a sleeping cage, which we moved into a quiet study room nearby. We also bought her a budgie buddy, who lives in a cage next to hers, so she always has company. Eureka! It worked perfectly, for several years.

Until I noticed that she was having huge poops in the morning; she was holding her poop until she was put back into her day cage. I kind of shrugged that off and didn't worry so much, until I read a story about a woman who's bird developed a lethal bacterial infection from holding her poops.

OH HELL NO!


So the last two nights I have left her in her day cage to sleep at night, and she doesn't hold her poops. But she can hear us typing and talking after birdy bedtime and is straight back to the crying at night. Literally sobbing. I would be horrified for the sheer dreadfullness of the cries, the depths of her suffering, but for the fact that she ocassionally breaks it up the heartbreaking sobbings with quiet whispers of "hollie bird" and kissing noises, so I know she's not actually suffering!!

I don't know what to do!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Any ideas?

EDIT: Holy heck, I just read about Happy Huts being of the devil, they cause hormonal issues and can kill conures. She has two of them, a yellow one and a green one she likes to chew on --- one in each cage because she loves her huts so much. Maybe that is why she is holding her poops? I just removed her huts completely and put her back in her sleeping cage for tonight. Maybe that will help... any other ideas?
 
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LaManuka

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Hello and welcome! There are plenty of conure custodians here so you are definitely among friends:)

I’m sorry you are having bedtime troubles. I unfortunately lost my green cheek to pancreatitis about 6 months ago now and still miss him desperately. He wasn’t much of a fan of bedtime either. He only really cried at me about it once though and yes it’s the most heartbreaking sound in the world isn’t it!

He was the only conure I’ve ever had so I am by no means an expert on the species. From what I have gathered about green cheeks though is that they do hold their poop overnight and let a massive great big one rip in the morning, I think it’s fairly common with them. So if she is happiest in her sleep cage in your study then I would stick with that. And yes definitely get rid of those happy huts they are a menace to conure-kind (and plenty of others too!)

You must tell us her name, and her budgie buddy, and we love pictures here too.

Again welcome and thanks for reaching out :)
 
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ChristaNL

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Hello and yes, I agree with LaManuka: bird generally hold in their poop at night (because they are busy sleeping!).
Poopholding in (very) small cages may happen -> the easiest solution is ..a larger cage.

And as for her being miserable: you are being played!!! :D

Once a parrot figures out which buttons to push to make a human do something he/she wants...it is a given.
(We call it training the bird, but it really works both ways: birdy does something, we give the reward! So who is training who is open for debate.)

So you have trained your bird to nag you at night...it happens, now untrain it ;)
Once birdy realises the nagging is not getting him/her anything...sleeping will be the more rewarding option.

Great about kicking the snuggle-huts! You are a great parront.
 

LaManuka

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Oh I know all about being played by little birds, I’ve been played by little birds all my life! As a matter of fact it’s happening right now:)
 

Laurasea

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Yes birds have a super large morning poop. ;) My GCC Ta-dah has a big fit for night time cuddles as well, to the point she had been finding ways to escape her cage to be with me. But in your circumstances you are self proclaimed night owls, and she wants to be part if the flock. Can you adjust her sleep hours, so she has evening time with you? For myself and Ta-dah we compromised, I get her out after all the other birds are asleep , and we have a twenty minutes cuddle, and she talks my ear off telling me all about her day, mostly mumbles, but some words I can understand ;). She then settles right down and goes to sleep, and has stopped trying to open doors and squeeze between bars. She also has a hut, I made it out if cardboard zip tied together, and used blue jean material for the floor, that way there is no fuzzies to hurt her. I've had her eight years and this has never caused hormonal behavior.even when for seven years of her life she shared the hut with her bestie Burt The Bird.... The card board is getting chewed on so am thinking of making a sea grass one next.
 

noodles123

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If she can hear you, her sleeping area isn't quiet enough. It is keeping her up, so just like a baby, you will have to either get quieter yourselves or get a sleeping cage for her and put her in her own room to sleep. Good call on removing the huts.

Birds need quiet, solid sleep (10-14 hours, with 10 being too little in most caes). Without it, their hormones get messes up and they develop behavior problems. Their immune system can also suffer.
 

EllenD

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Hello and welcome to the community!

Green Cheeks love to play you like a fiddle, and that's what is going on here, I agree...Now if you weren't covering her main-cage while you were still up on the computers and such, then that would be something to try, but assuming you were covering it and she was still begging to come back out, then you just have to ignore it, no matter how sad she sounds...She's fine, she's trying to get her way, and it's worked!!! That's one option, if you ignore her crying completely and keep her main cage covered with a dark sheet/blanket to block out the light, after a week or two she'll eventually stop crying when she realizes that she's not going to get her way...

If you can't handle that, the sleeping cage is fine to use, each of my birds have one in my bedroom with their main cages downstairs, and they sleep just fine, even with me walking in hours after they've gone to bed...And their sleep-cages are purposely small, only large enough for each of them to fully open their wings and not have them or their tail-feathers touch the bars, and then they each have one perch, a swing, and a water dish...That's it. No toys, food, etc.

***What I'm not understanding is the thing about your bird not pooping over-night...None of my 4 birds ever poop overnight in their sleeping cages, in fact I don't think I've ever cleaned up poop in their sleeping cages unless I've laid in bed too long for them to hold it, they typically go right downstairs to their main cages and that's the first thing they do...So if the only issue you're having is that your Green Cheek is holding his poop all night long, then you don't have an issue, it's perfectly normal! If that's the case, and your bird is fine sleeping quietly in the sleeping cage, then I'd just keep putting him in the sleeping-cage in the separate room each night, and then in the morning just take him to his main cage so he can poop...If you were to leave him in his sleeping cage long enough in the morning he would eventually go, but what he is doing is perfectly normal and isn't going to make him at all sick...You should see the size of the morning-poops of my mom's Congo African Gray! She calls them his "All-nighters",
and they're huge!
Totally normal and you're guy is fine...
 

LordTriggs

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I would stick with the sleep cage you had set-up and just make sure first thing you do is get him out for him to do his business. None of us poop in the bed (I hope not!) so why would he want to? ;)

It seemed the sleep cage was working in regards to calming him down and getting some good sleep just understandably you were worried about the poop but the morning one is always a bit bigger. As long as you're not up for ages before freeing the beast and letting him go to the toilet he should be okay
 
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Maerow

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Hi everyone!


Wow this is such a friendly forum, thank you all for responding. Holly really does like her sleeping cage, she just hates actually going to bed. Birdy bedtime is 10pm and I get her up at 10am the next morning, so she gets a solid 12 hours of sleeptime.

Okay so it sounds like I am manufacturing a panic here that doesn't need to be. If huge morning poos are normal across the board and aren't dangerous or cause infections then I am going to just go back to using her sleeping cage. If it ain't actually broke, don't fix it!


All this worry ended up being for the good though because I removed Holly's happy huts, which actually could cause an issue, so that makes me happy.



Thank you so much for easing my mind! :D
 

EllenD

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Hi everyone!


Wow this is such a friendly forum, thank you all for responding. Holly really does like her sleeping cage, she just hates actually going to bed. Birdy bedtime is 10pm and I get her up at 10am the next morning, so she gets a solid 12 hours of sleeptime.

Okay so it sounds like I am manufacturing a panic here that doesn't need to be. If huge morning poos are normal across the board and aren't dangerous or cause infections then I am going to just go back to using her sleeping cage. If it ain't actually broke, don't fix it!


All this worry ended up being for the good though because I removed Holly's happy huts, which actually could cause an issue, so that makes me happy.



Thank you so much for easing my mind! :D


Sounds like the right plan...There is no such thing as a "stupid" question, and when it comes to birds, since they all do innately hide all outward signs/symptoms of pain and illness for as long as they can, it's very important that you notice little things like this, so you're doing a great job...But year, it's perfectly normal for them to not poop at all during the night, not once...And like I said, if you were to leave him inside of his sleep-cage long enough in the morning, he'd poop in it eventually, and it would be huge! Lol..Be thankful he's a small bird! Even my Senegal's droppings are massive compared to my Green Cheek's, and his first morning droppings are like an explosion...So you can imagine what a Cockatoo's or a Macaw's is like!!!

And yes, exactly, you learned about the "Death-Huts", which is really not at all an exaggeration, they have killed thousands of pet birds, and they still sell them. It's disgusting. So spread the word to any other bird owners you might know or speak to...
 

GaleriaGila

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Well, I'm late to this party, but I certainly enjoyed the read.

You got some great support and advice!

I'm glad you found us!
 

Boki

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EllenD wrote "None of my 4 birds ever poop overnight in their sleeping cages, in fact I don't think I've ever cleaned up poop in their sleeping cages unless I've laid in bed too long for them to hold it, they typically go right downstairs to their main cages and that's the first thing they do..."

I am curious as to whether you trained your birds to only poop in the main cage or was it something they do naturally? If you did potty train them for only using their main cage, how early did you start that training.

I am on path to getting a GCC and prefer to have a sleeping cage in a quiet room and the larger cage in the busy area. I just didn't know how or when to potty train? Is it better to get them used to pooping in the main cage first then introduce the sleeping cage or vice versa? Or does this all happen organically as the birds are smart enough not to poop in their own bed?
 

LaManuka

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I don’t know if I just got lucky with my GCC Baci (God rest his precious little soul!), but he virtually potty-trained himself and from what I can gather a lot of green cheeks are like that. It never even occurred to me to train him, he pretty much worked out for himself that it was ok to poop anywhere but on me which was very nice:) He didn’t have a sleeping cage either nor have I ever used one for any of my birds, in that respect I guess that’s a matter of personal choice and what works best for you.

Hope to see pics of your baby soon!
 
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noodles123

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Boki-



It is my understanding that potty training birds can lead to health issues in some cases. My bird is technically potty trained, in that she knows what "go poop" means and she will do it if I tell her and she has to go. That having been said, if a bird doesn't have to go, you don't want them straining and trying to push something out. Similarly, if a bird has to go, you don't want them holding it in for any reason other than their own weird preference. In other words, I am guessing EllenD's birds just prefer not to soil their sleeping space and avoid it--but if they were in there for longer and needed to go, hopefully they would. My bird, on the other hand, poops in hers at night. She does prefer to go outside of the cage (on some mats I put out), but she doesn't feel compelled to do so.

I do praise my bird when she poops "Good pooping!" if it is in a location that isn't the carpet or a person etc and she never poops when on people. They also sell bird diapers if that is an issue that you are having.
 
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Sunnyclover

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Holding poop at night especially in a "night cage" is really really common. All 3 of mine hold it all night and go in the sink every morning. So don't worry about that part. Also my Conures are potty trained but they held it at night even when they weren't... nothing to fret about. Just put her back near her buddy in the night cage and everything should be fine. Bird's don't like to poop where they sleep because it attacts predators.
 
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GCRiomom

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I work nights, so my conure and I have the same sleep schedule so we can spend time together. I recently learned snuggley huts are the devil too. As soon as I removed it Rio's behavior changed. He is back to being my sweet boy.
 

Morty

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One hundred percent playing you LOL. Mine knows he's not getting his way at night, but on weekends when we can sleep in, if he so much as hears someone turn over or start to wake, he starts chattering away from under his cage blanket. First it's "Oh! Hello! Here I am!" kind of chirps. Getting more and more persistent. Then it's him going "Pizza... Pizza... Pizza Roll... Pizza roooollll" (yes he does say this lol) in the most pathetic tone imaginable. Like "Oh woe is me, little Pizza Roll under here, languishing at being ignored"
You just have to ignore it. After a minute or two he gets the memo that it's not time for awake yet, and he goes back to being quiet and I fall back asleep.
 

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