I have city water and my birds drink it, bath in it, etc. However, my mom and stepfather have a well, and they've had "iffy" test results in the past, I don't know what levels are off, but they don't drink the water, nor do their animals...and they have 2 dogs, a ton of different poultry and game birds, and then my mom's Congo African Grey. So they have used to have water delivered by Culligan, but they realized that it's actually a lot cheaper to just by gallons of spring water at Walmsrt, so that's what they do. And they bath their dogs and the Grey in the spring water as well....
As already mentioned, it simply depends on where you live, where your water comes from, and what your water is like...A good rule of thumb though is that if it's not safe for you to drink/bath in then don't let your pets drink/bath in it...and if you think that there's a reason that your pets shouldn't drink/bath in it, then maybe you shouldn't be drinking/bathing in it either, lol...
****Interesting and infuriating fact I recently found-out during an emergency room trip: I am from this area originally (State College, PA), I grew-up in a tiny little mining town about 20 minutes away, I went to college about 40 minutes from here, and I've lived in State College since 2002 (with the exception of living in the Charlotte, NC area for about a year in 2006)...Anyway, I started having chronic kidney stones at the age of 18...I had my very first one a month before my 19th birthday, during the start of my sophmore year of undergrad (I thought I was dying, didn't know what it was), and the urologist gave me 3 weeks to pass the thing before he was going to perform surgery to take it out...Well he let it in there too long because I got a horrible kidney infection that I almost died from, ended-up having emergency surgery to remove the stone from my right ureter and to basically Roto-Rooter my right kidney. I had to leave college, missing that entire semester (I made up those 18 credits over summer sessions and graduated on-time in 4 years)...After that first stone, I started to have a kidney stone that was large enough/shaped oddly enough that it would cause a problem about once every 3-4 months...I've had 3 operations to remove them/put a stent in to allow them to pass, and I was going to the emergency room probably once every 4 months because I would get one that was blocking my urine flow and causing that god-awful pain in your upper back/flank that you hear about with kidney stones...I'm now 38 years old, and I can honestly say, without exaggeration, that I've probably had around 100-150 kidney stones THAT I HAVE BEEN AWARE OF because they have caused pain, blood, etc That's not counting the probably hundreds if not thousands of ones I've just passed without knowing about them...Three different Urologists and one Nephrologist have told me the same exact thing: Some people are just "Stone-Collectors", and no matter what they do, changing their diets completely, taking special meds, vitamins, supplements, etc., drinking gallons of water a day, etc., it just doesn't matter, they just get chronic stones, and there's nothing they can do about it except deal with it...So after trying absolutely everything possible, trust me, everything...I just resigned myself to the fact that I'm just one of the lucky people who is a "Stone Collector"...uhg. It's exhausting, it really is...
Then a couple of months ago I ended-up in the emergency room on a Sunday night with stone on my right side...I keep prescription narcotic opiate painkillers at home so I don't have to be constantly running to the emergency room and can just wait to go to my Urologist the next day or whatever, but sometimes when they block the flow of urine, the pain is so bad that I'd kill myself if I had a gun...literally Or I think I am going to die, and I need both IV opiate pain meds and fluids to move the stone, along with IV anti-nausea meds, because the pain is so bad that you vomit continuously WHILE you're curled-up on the floor in the fetal position...anyway, I went to the hospital, they got me all hooked-up to the fluids, I peed in the cup, they took blood, and then they gave me the Dilaudid/Fentenyl, and I was finally able to rest...They did a CT scan and I had a 6mm stone in my right ureter partially blocking my urine, had to wait and see my Urologist, blah blah blah, same old thing. I was thankful that I got a good doctor that understood what these things are like, often times the ER doctors actually yell at me because "This is a chronic problem, not an emergency, you're wasting our time, just go to your GP tomorrow, etc." They've obviously never had a kidney stone, as I always ask them if they have when they're like that. So this nice doctor asked me if I had lived in this area long, and I told him all my life...and his eyes lit-up like a Christmas Tree...He said that he had read a journal article outlining a study years ago, and he had decided to do his own study, and he wanted to know if I minded participating, if he could use my entire past medical record that pertained just to kidney stones, including all of my CT Scans, X-Rays, etc. I told him sure, but asked him what the study was about...he came back about an hour later, gave me another shot of pain meds (I loved this doctor, lol), and explained that the level of natural Calcium in the water-supply in central PA, DUE TO ALL OF THE MINING/FRACKING, as well as all of the mountains that had long-ago been cut-through for highways/interstates...Basically the huge amount of limestone in the mountains has created a water supply that has a level of Calcium in it that is WAY ABOVE THAT OF THE NATIONAL AVERAGE...So while yes, I'm a "stone collector", as I cannot process Oxalate correctly, so all of the free Oxalates I take-in binds with all of the Calcium in the water, creating Calcium Oxalate stones...So all of this crap I've gone through for most of my life, the horrible pain, the hospital visits, the surgeries, the drugs, all due to mining/fracking/drilling...So there's the reason that I don't drink the water out of the tap, it could literally kill me...
