Digestive

A healthy crop empties overnight; a crop that stays full, smells sour on the bird’s breath, or refills without her eating is the first honest sign something in the gut is off. What that “something” is runs from a yeast overgrowth (sour crop) to an impaction that started as too much long grass, to the slower kind of trouble that shows up as loose or off-colour droppings a week before anything else does.

If sour crop is what you’re looking at, the honest line — what’s safe to try at home versus what a vet handles under sedation, and no folk remedies dressed up as protocols — matters more than any single remedy list on the internet. Chicken keepers land here most often, though the same crop-anatomy rules apply to budgies, cockatiels, and larger parrots. For how digestive trouble sits alongside the rest of what can go wrong, our bird health guide is the wider map.

A bird off feed for more than 24 hours, or a crop that smells foul, needs a vet. Talk to an avian vet.