HER POOP IS BLACK HELP!!

i just woke up and she just pooped when i turned the light on and its black! omg what should i do?? im taking her to the vet in an hour when they open. is there anything i should do right now? what does it mean when its black??

well shes at the vets now.. dropped her off ill be getting a call in an hour or two on how shes doing and whats going on

Don't panic just yet. It could be any number of things.... something she ate (many dark berries do this) or even stress. Let your vet check her over, I'm sure she will be fine. Keep us posted!

Yes, keep us posted. If they had a stool sample at her first visit, and that was normal, I'd think its a good sign that there is nothing too serious going on. Fingers crossed.

I agree and think its just stress related, keeping fingers crossed here too.

thanks guys vet should be calling soon, Dr.Wilson just got done with surgery i guess thats why she hasnt called yet.

just got a call! okay so she said mikko is in an incubator and shes
looking kinda sick not responding to food so their gonna run some tests
treat her for gasterol upset, and give her anti acid and run blood
tests. she said its probably because of stress of changing homes but i
dont wanna take any chance and their also going to tube feed her my poor girl!

Yup..stress. We see this a lot at the rescue. She'll be fine.

what do you do to treat them at the rescue?

TLC mostly. Keep them calm, move them to a quieter area if necessary. Hold and coddle them. In bad cases, we send them to the vet and they get the same treatment. Antiacids and sometimes a sort of valium to calm them.

It sounds as if they are taking good care of her. Hopefully she'll be fine soon and can come home and get a chance to settle in and stop stressing.

Vikki, I'm assuming what we are talking about is stress-induced bleeding ulcers? Is that correct?

I'm going to be pedantic for a second because that's what I do...

Gastric -- of or relating to the stomach
Gastrointestinal or Gastroenteric-- of or relating to the stomach and intestines
Gastroenterologist -- an M.D. or V.M.D. specializing in the stomach and intestines
Gastroenteritis -- inflammation of the stomach and/or intestines literally, colloquially nonspecific digestive upset.

I don't know the whole deal as to why the poop turns black, I don't believe it has to do with blood though. I'm told when birds have bleeding ulcers, etc that they actually poop blood because their intestinal tract is so short and doesn't have time to oxidize or whatever it does to turn black. I believe the black relates to high levels of one chemical or another produced naturally in their body. For some reason potassium comes to mind, but I don't think that's right.

I have to pull paperwork on a few of our birds tonight anyway, I know its part of the blood tests we run on new surrenders and I can tell by that.

it's supposed to be bile:
http://www.exoticpetvet.net/avian/droppings.html

I was going to say bile, but I remember our vet attributing it to a certain bad level of something their intestine secrete when they are overly stressed.

If a bird doesn't eat any solid food for about 24 hours, the fecal portion of the droppings will become dark, dark green (that is almost black) and very sticky and tarry. This is often mistaken for digested blood in the droppings, but it is actually a type of bile (biliverdin) from the liver.

i took this from the post roz wrote


dusty

it looked black idk :/ shes at the vet still gonna be staying over night was tube fed already and is having some more soon. waiting for test results and for the dr to get out of some surgery with other patients and get a call around 9 heres a picture of the poop from this morning

This is a thread I could get in on SO fast, but I have to get started on dinner... as soon as I get it started, I'll contribute. Black stool indicates blood in people, but it makes sense that it wouldn't in birds for the aforementioned reasons, so I'd be really slow to jump to that conclusion... the bile make a LOT more sense.

I'll be back.

Sorry, I took the antacid advice + mammal digestion and jumped to a conclusion. Bad scientist, no biscuit! Coral what does the vet say... do they suspect anything other than stress and the need to make sure she's fed and hydrated?

im not gonna really know until like 9 tonight

Shes doing much better, perching, eating, drinking, still tube feeding and in an incubator but doing good! her poop is getting better and better! im so happy shes doing better!

I hope everything turns out fine!

Good to know. She'll be fine.

When does she get to come home?

Were waiting for the results from the blood test to make sure she doesn't have any diseases and if that comes out fine and they don't have to change any of the meds hopefully tomorrow or Thursday? She's still being tube fed so Idk