# No urates and excessive urine



## Danielle (Aug 15, 2008)

Has anyone ever encountered this?

Recently all my birds - tiels and my quaker - have had a problem where their poop has been normal, but there has been absolutely zero urates and excessive urine.

I took Sati (the quaker) to see my vet, who was really quite flummoxed. He's not an avian vet, but he does have a lot of experience with pet birds and has never heard of absent urates. He did some research and determined it wasn't environmental, bacterial, or behavioural. He concluded it was almost certainly dietary. We had a long discussion about their diet, which he determined was absolutely fine, which made things even more mysterious.

Eventually I thought to mention that they all get extra calcuium suppliment, since they don't touch cuttlefish. He decided that the probable cause was calcium poisoning.

Since I saw him I've removed the extra calcium and switched them from a high performance pellet to regular vetafarm crumbles and they now have the urates back and no longer have excessive urine.

I was a bit skeptical at first because it seemed odd that all 7 would get sick at once when their diet hadn't changed and they'd all been on that diet for varying amounts of time. I thought it was much more likely that they got a bug from the new quaker. But the diet change has seemed to clear the problem up so I guess that was the issue after all.


I couldn't find ANYTHING on the internet about missing urates, and Andrew couldn't find anything in his text books. We both knew about excess urine, and he thinks the lack of urates was due to them being dilluted, causing the excess urine. He said excess calcium can damage the kidneys.

Does anyone have any experience with this symptom, or with calcium poisoning? I was horrified that I had unwittingly been hurting my birds and I still feel terribly guilty.


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## kimmikefids (Aug 2, 2008)

oh u poor thing!!!! is urates the white matter in the poop? if so then no i have never experienced loss of that...sometimes when they have been eating the pak choy they have more urine and its not always as obvious but there is always some trace of it.....it does seem to be the cause by the fact u changed the diet and their poop is back to normal...i do wonder if just the extra calcium needed to be changed and they could still be on the high performance...i know its hard to do but dont feel too guilty...clearly there is no information out there about the fact u can poison them by giving too much calcium but in fact the opposite...all we can do is arm ourselves with as much info as possible and do the best that we can for them....im just glad u caught it early before its likely it did any damage.....u did what all the info told u to do!! u cant blame urself for that...u did the right thing by trying to do the best for them!


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## Danielle (Aug 15, 2008)

Yup, it's the solid white stuff. I was so impressed with Andrew for working that out, especially since I'd taken Sati to the avian vet and been told there was nothing wrong with her except that I fed her 'human' foods.

I was so sure it was some kind of bacterial thing but Andrew said the poop would have been different if it had been bacterial, so that was immediately a huge relief. They never really liked those pellets anyway, but they love the crumbles so I might stick with it. Sati liked them, and I might try and put her back on them eventually but I'm sticking with this diet until they're all 100% normal. No excess urine but I think there should be more urates still.


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## Renae (Feb 9, 2008)

I′ve gone through a ton of sites about this and someone mentioned "Gout"

Did by any chance the Vet do urate level tests?


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## atvchick95 (Sep 17, 2007)

I've never had an issue with that 

but if a bird is eating pellets, fresh veggies/foods they don't need calcium supplements even if they don't use a cuttle bone. Pellets have a lot of vitamins in them plus all the vitamins from fresh /cooked foods They don't need supplements Only time it would be needed is on a all seed diet with NO veggies/cooked foods.


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## xxxSpikexxx (Jul 30, 2007)

Iam glad you found out what was wrong. I guess that is why that most bags of pellets say that there is no need to use vitamin or mineral supplements when feeding their pellets. Here is a link I found about calcium http://www.birdsnways.com/wisdom/ww22eii.htm I hope your birdies will be back to normal in no time


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## Danielle (Aug 15, 2008)

He mentioned gout too, and that was initially what he was leaning towards until I mentioned the calcium. It seems he was right, since they're still on the same fruit and veggies and seed, just minus any added calcium. He said he'd do a urate test if things didn't improve.

The thing is, the tiels don't really eat the pellets, hence providing the added suppliment. They'll eat them in bird bread, but not on their own. They're heading towards more pellet than seed but they aren't there yet.


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