Is It Bad For Your Parrot To Be Potty Trained?

Holding “it” isn’t good for humans or parrots. There is talk about potty training being unhealthy for your parrot because encourages them to hold it and not release. True or not, I think the take-away is that you need to make sure your parrot is healthy.

Parrots Poop Often

The smaller the parrot, like a Lovebird or a Parrotlet, the smaller the poop and the more frequent. The bigger the bird, the less often they poop — but when they do, watch out! We sometimes call them “Elephant poops!”

Regardless of size, parrots have a natural inclination to poop and not get themselves dirty. They tend not to walk in their poop or do anything to get themselves dirty. Use this in training your parrot.

Parrots Get It

I find that my flock is intelligent. They seem to know what I’m doing and why I”m doing it, most of the time. They take cues well and, for example, my Yellow-naped Amazon will spend an hour or two on me as I watch a movie or take a nap, and she’ll wait until we get up and go to a perch to poop. Most of the time. The times she doesn’t, it’s often my fault.

A Poop Perch

The part of my flock that I aim to train has a “poop” perch. This perch does not have food and water for them. It has one purpose only.

I don’t train most of my flock. My Macaws, for example, don’t poop on my husband or I. They don’t poop often and they get off of us when they need to poop. This means that, if you have a clipped parrot, they wont’ be able to choose to get off you to poop.

In that case, you may want to do what my daughter does with her Green-cheeked Conures: she puts them on their poop perch every 15 to 20 minutes – even though their wings are not clipped. She doesn’t pick them back up until they have pooped.

This is interesting because this means that some of our parrots aren’t “trained” to poop on command, but are encouraged to poop in a certain area – and they are taught they will be given “poop” breaks at predictable times.

Parrots like patterns and predictable behaviors and routines.


Have a questions about parrots?
As the author of “The Parrot Bliss Bond,” I love and welcome questions about having a parrot and creating one of the best experiences of your life!

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