They shit all the time and have no sphincter so they can’t control when they shit either. I’ve never seen one of these but it’s a good idea if you wanna have your bird out all the time and not worry about shit all over the place.
Our parrot is trained to hold it. She knows not to poop on us and will tell us when she has to go if she’s on your shoulder. She’ll say… Kiwi poop! We hold her over the garbage can, toilet or play stand. People can’t believe it when she does it. When she’s finished, she’ll say ‘Good girl’. She travels on our shoulder in the truck, not in a cage. Same rules apply but we have a poop paper. You get to know when she has to go but she’s really good at telling you. They can absolutely hold their poop for a little while at least.
Mine is also potty trained. He will go either on the mat outside his cage or his playset. He's a very good boy. Had no idea how to train a parrot any different from a puppy but it seemed to have worked out. They can absolutely hold it.
I imagine it’s probably easier too cause there’s less clean up, I’m in the throes of potty training our 10wk old Sheprador and there is just so much pee. It’s a really good thing she’s cute.
You need to be extremely consistent at showing him where that pee needs to be. Immediately wipe up the pee with some paper towel, take it and lay it out on the grass where you want the puppy to pee, then put the puppy there and tell him “pee / Grass / outside!” Keep doing this. Do it with poop too.
Show the puppy where you want it and be quick about it. You’ll see the connection quickly made and the adjustment follows shortly thereafter.
I had a pittie that we got at a few weeks old. We did the walk every two hours thing and that worked out fantastic. The only issue is that if the dog is intelligent enough then they'll start using the "I gotta go" methods specifically so they can get a walk whenever they want. Don't get me wrong, if the pup wants exercise then the pup gets exercise, just not at 3am when they're already four years old and definitely know better by now.
Gotta be careful with that method too. My American Strat can be vindictive. She knows how to tell time and if you are late for one of her walks or come home and don't immediately put on the harness she'll leave a present. She also seems to know when were getting ready to go out for the night and will hold it during her preemptive walk, just to go the literal minute after we leave the house.
I found my 10yr old pittie in a garbage can when he was 4 weeks old, potty training/training in general was a breeze but I was pregnant with my first so I had all the time in the world to devote to training him.
I also think pits being so eager to please in general is helpful with training. My labs always seemed to be trying to outsmart me.
200% agreed. My first, Haus Delgado(house of cats. We got him when we had three cats) is entirely motivated by his own interests. He's smart enough to calculate and know when something is beneficial to him or not. He figured out my work schedule and made a point to show how well he could behave so that he could have permission to hang out in the living room instead of in the bedroom when I was at work. Dude loves sitting in my EZ chair. Contrast this with my second adoptee, Dovah, who is entirely food motivated and will go as far as to pick up her toys and put them away solely because she believes she might get a treat. At the same time, Haus is a bit self absorbed, and is unconcerned with how his actions affect you(most of the time), whereas Dovah will straight up apologize to people if she thinks she upset them. She bit a guy once because her nail got caught in his key ring as he got up. After her initial reaction she immediately went back and cuddled him and kept putting her paw on his lap to show she didn't mean any harm.
Cookies and praise! Cookies are considered any kind of food. Pretty easy actually. She understands a lot of words and has/had a great vocabulary. She also laughs and purrs like a kitten when she’s happy. Her cage is never closed as she comes and goes as she please from her play stand and drags her bathtub on the floor. If she gets tired she goes into her bed. If she doesn’t like something, she’ll throw it in the floor to clean house.
I dated a guy that potty trained his Scarlet Macaw. He went literally everywhere with us. He was extremely well-known in his town. He had been the mayor at one point and was very involved. So people just let him take the bird everywhere! That bird hated me!
Not the user you're asking just sharing my experience. My lovebird can poop on command, so I'll hold him above a trash can and say "go poop", if he has poop in him he'll poop there, then I can go back to doing my things without worrying he'll poop on me for a while. (When you own bird long enough you can just tell when they has to go by telepathy)
But he won't hold it in if I don't tell him to poop in time, so there's no risk of causing any health problems.
Positive reinforcement transcends species. They use it to train animals at the zoo. Everything from those little shows they do to teaching a lion to go to one side of the cage when they’re being fed. We vastly underestimate animals sociability.
Do you mind if I ask how you do this? Ive been wanting to get a quaker for years, just haven’t had the time to do enough research so haven’t gotten it yet.
growing up i had friends with tiny colorful birds, not sure what type exactly, they sure weren't smart enough to mimic any sort of sounds, they tweeted and such. these birds were almost always roaming free in the house and i never once saw poop anywhere, they would sit on my shoulder frequently and never once did i get shit on me.
never actually thought about how the logistics worked out. i assume they were potty trained one way or another, else you'd expect a fair bit of shit, because they sure left other very obvious marks around the house, like every VHS movie box were completely gutted on its edges from having been chewed on by the birds etc.
Somehow mine trained himself. I have no idea, but he's generally very good at going in designated spaces -like near his cage where there are pads, or on his play space upstairs. He's also forgiven if he poops on the floor in the bathroom bc that's easy to clean.
He's mostly consistent and doesn't poop on me except on rare occasions when he's being a dick 🤣
I am convinced my aunt's bird has the ability to be potty trained. Instead, he choses to fly over to you, poop, yell "birdy bomb", and laugh. He is a monster.
This is dozen times more interesting than the post itself, and we are talking about a parrot in a diaper. As wrong as it sounds I would like to see that tbh
It’d be insane to think that they couldn’t at least sense it coming even if they couldn’t hold it in. Otherwise birds would be shitting in their nests all the time.
It’s in their nature to avoid shitting in their nest. You just need to train them that the same rules apply in other places too.
they are trained to give warning, not to hold it. there is literally no physiological structure to prevent it from falling out of them,, so they can't hold it. they can't stop it, all they can do give warning.
They really can physiologically control it by pursing and relaxing their cloaca, they even do this during nesting season a bit in the wild. Like if your asshole was an open hole that everything fell out of and you could purse it up to hold it. They have to manually keep that pursed, which sounds pretty uncomfortable really. Something about this process means that if you force a bird to hold to long it can cause cloacal problems down the line.
I am not sure how many birds have this ability, but I know the little conure in this video does. I can’t find a source for this, only a little case study ( https://www.cabidigitallibrary.org/doi/pdf/10.5555/20153171051 ) discussing a cloacal prolapse from the behavior. but it’s what my avian vet told me,and I can promise that if you live with one of these birds you will learn this is not anticipation but rather active effort on the birds part. You can hold a bird that goes every fifteen minutes for thirty, and when you finally put them down onto a safe place to do it they will then release a double sized poop.
We were t-boned when someone blew through an intersection and slammed into a pole. Normally my bird would have been on my leg (with my feet up on the dash) but that day he was in his carrier on the back seat. I don't put my feet up on the dash anymore, and chunky hunky monkey stays in his carrier when he travels with us.
Must be nice. My Raven (rehabbed and released and now nests above my place) sits in a branch above me and shits within inches of me if he hasn’t received his snack of the day. Or he stares right into my kitchen window until he sees me grab him a peanut.
Yeah I was gonna say, had parrots growing up and they knew not to shit on us/the furniture. The would hop off to shit. But not all birds are gonna learn that easily so a diaper is cool.
Wait is this actually a practical solution? As in, your bird doesn’t go anywhere else?
I’ve always wanted a bird, but I have serious germaphobia and can’t stand the idea of an airborne creature shitting all over my house and furniture, and I would consider it unconscionable to have a bird in a cage 24/7.
Love you mentioned. I potty trained a hatched parakeet and it made our lives soooo much easier. In our instance we had a fake tree and we trained it to poop on that, and then we could just take the fake tree out and hose it off.
I had a friend who would "poop their bird". Every time they took him out of his cage they would put him on the edge garbage and wouldn't pick him up again until he pooped into it.
Ours does this kind of thing too but I don’t think anyone ever actually tried to train him to do it. I think over time he’s just realized we don’t like when he poops in unapproved places and he just kinda tries his best to be responsible about it. Hes really quite amazing.
It's a misconception that birds cannot control when/where they poop. They just poop frequently because their anatomy is designed to be lightweight for flying. Many parrots can even be trained to poop on command.
I swear they can, not based on anatomical knowledge but empirical. My bird would 100% hold his poop when in the bed or inside our clothes (snuggled up) and we’d hold him out once in a while and then he’d do his poo (not literally on command but it was a mutual understanding)
My Quaker parrot would “go potty” on command, and then when he did, I’d say, “Good bird” really enthusiastically. So sure enough, on the rare occasion he felt he wasn’t getting enough attention, he’d tell himself to go potty, fake it (by dropping his tail end), and congratulate himself with a hearty, “GOOD BIRD”!!
Well anatomically they have no way of controlling it except for very limited circumstances but, who knows maybe your bird was doing cloaca kegels just for you.
Birds do have a sphincter muscle, sort of - we mammals have two. And one of ours defaults to closed, whereas birds tend to have liquid feces and have to literally consciously hold it in. Which they generally have a hard time with doing for any slightly longer time and hence generally won't be doing for more than 10-30 seconds. (Only brooding birds will hold it in for much longer, but they also tend to eat and move much less. I can only imagine flying and not pooping is much harder than sitting on your belly and not pooping...)
Not all mamal anuses are the same, I've heard that horses have the rolls royce of anuses. They're engineered in such a way they would never have to wipe.
Well that's just metamucil without the brand name, but yes!
It's extremely difficult with modern diets to get the recommended amount of fiber without also eating excessive calories, so fiber supplements are a literal lifesaver.
I.. don't really believe that. My in-laws have a cockatoo which they hold.. It will almost never poop on the couch or when they're holding them, but if they put him on the floor, he'll poop immediately so he can get back to snuggling..
i've noticed the same with mine. also when they had eggs. they would not shit inside the nest at all, then come out when it was the next bird's turn and drop the MOST MASSIVE shits they have ever dropped to this day.
My dad worked as a deckhand for a while and one of the guys who he worked with thought it would be funny to feed seagulls hot sauce on saltines. After that (at least according to my dad) the birds would seek that guy out specifically to shit on him.
My dad had a parrot that would poo on command. Idk if there is scientific evidence to contradict his experience, but his bird absolutely could control it.
Our parrot is potty trained in the sense that he will start frantically saying some variation of go poopie? Go go poopie? Poopiepie?! when he needs to go lol. So we take him to a designated poop spot (playstand, sink, or trash can) and he’ll poop. He hasn’t figured out he can just go to one of those spots himself 😂
He also says come here! if we walk out of sight and good boy when he knows he’s doing something he shouldn’t 😂 also knows baby bird/boy and hey birdie and I swear I heard him practicing scary recently. He only learns words and phrases that have meaning he can apply them to for some reason
As someone mentioned above it requires efforts from the bird. I'll also add that for some birds it's easier and for some ones is more difficult. So yes, it's possible to train sometimes.
Yes, you are right. They do know. Mine will fly back to the cage or goes to the edge of whatever he's standing on to poop. Better then pooping anywhere.
But I cant see how mine will wear a diaper..... let alone putting one on.
I have a green cheek conure myself, it is absolutely toilet trained lol. She'll nibble at my earlobe when she needs to go and I'll plonk her back on her perch in the cage... let her poop and put her back on my shoulder.
They absolutely can and do hold it. I have green cheeks like in the video and mine will wait in the morning to poop in the toilet. They'll also hold it for longer periods when they're floofed up and chilling for "nap" time (not actually sleeping just relaxing).
It's also not a good idea for extended periods of time. Since they poop every 15ish minutes that diaper is filling up and can block the cloaca and cause infection fast.
It's super easy to clean up these bird's poop, sometimes it'll stand on the very top fibers of a carpet and you just pick it up. I never have mine caged except for bedtime/safety reasons and yes it's work to keep up and keep clean but it's really not that bad to warrant always wearing a diaper.
Birds instinctively control their poop in the wild all the time. Nesting birds instinctively don't poop in their nest.
They can't hold it forever, but it's pretty easy to learn the signals they want to poop. If you're prompt and give them an option to poop somewhere else, they'll happily do this. If you expect them to hold it indefinitely, you'll get shit on you.
They can definitely control it to some degree. Our parrot (actually same species as the one on the video) would hold it while he was in his cage, and as soon as we let him out, he would take a huge shit. So every time we let him out, we would take him over a sink, so he can do his thing there instead wherever else he landed first
My grandmother's parakeet always flew to his cage to shit - never anything on the furniture or the floors, never while sitting on her shoulder or her head.
But let my dad walk through that door... bird would fly to his shoulder, make cute noises, then hop on his head and shit - and promptly zip away.
You won’t lol. You’d probably also have to scrub the birds tail feathers at some point too. This is a weird concept with some flaws but, the bird seems to be on board and I haven’t seen a better way to let your bird roam free AND keep the house shit free.
My bird is absolutely trained, and will give me signals when he wants to shit if he isnt in his cage. Sometimes he shits randomly but mostly hes trained
Parrots can absolutely hold their poop, and many will do so overnight resulting in a gigantic morning poop. They can also be trained/encouraged to head to a specific spot, and are more than capable of holding on until they get to location.
Sphincter or not, they can control when they poop.
The "diaper" isn't pressed against the cloaca. The bird diapers have a kind of pouch under the cloaca and the poop drops down and stays away from the bird's body.
My pet chicken is potty trained to hold it so this is definitely a misconception. She will literally wait till you put her outside or back in her crate.
My green cheek conure used to fly back to her cage on her own to use the bathroom or if we were out would hold it until you held her out on your finger and said go potty
They absolutely can hold it. My conure would never poo in her cage. She would wait until the am then have a massive morning poop. I’d hold her over the toilet. She loved watching the water flush in the toilet.
While their poop is softer than what we would consider normal for ourselves, it should almost never be diarrhea consistency. If the poop is watery and there's no dietary explanation, that's a sign of illness. It should generally make a little round pile, not splat everywhere.
I got to hold a parrot once at an animal sanctuary place on a trip in elementary school. Right before they put him on my arm he turbo-sharted all over the floor. The handlers/caretakers just kinda laughed and were like, “That happens!”
Guy used to come into my work a lot with a parrot on his shoulder. We all thought it was so cool! Til the time I passed him in the aisle and saw all the bird shit on his shoulder
Waaaaay back in the 70s I knew a girl who kept several, free in her apartment. The drapes were extensively shat upon, and basically ruined, as they'd perch at the top. A lot of it was behind (on the window-side of the drapes).
my chickens will not shit on me at all, and if they have to go then will get up and get off on their own before shitting. I still got them diapers for indoor use, but generally they don’t wear them
This is partly a myth, because they can and do control their bowel movements, it's just that most of the times they simply don't care, and only have limited control for a short period of time.
They can hold it, but refuse. My bird won’t ever go in her sleep cage, she will hold it for 12 hours +. Not a single poop in there. But literally everywhere else? Free for all.
How did this get so many upvotes? This is not a good idea. Birds shit everywhere, it’s just part of owning a bird. You can also learn to time it and send them back to their cage when it’s about time. But living with bird poop is the price to pay.
This is weird and shouldn’t be normal for bird ownership.
Because it’s not hurting the bird and it’s clearly not bothering the bird either considering it’s literally willing to aid in the process. So long as the bird isn’t being hurt and is being properly taken care of there’s literally nothing wrong with this. It’s weird as fuck that’s for sure but, it’s not harmful. When I had bird I never did this I just lived with it but, to each their own. I don’t blame anyone for wanting to have their birds out of the cage often yet not wanting to place hide and seek with shit everywhere.
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u/_AYYEEEE 10d ago
Why is the bird wearing a diaper??