The Importance of Weighing Your Bird

I talked about “true weight.” This is the accurate weight of the animal. How do you get it? It’s by weighing them BEFORE they eat and at the same time everyday. If you weigh in at different times, you’ll get different results, just like with humans.

That’s nice to know but honestly any weigh in is better than none. Sometimes I’m not always consistent; I’m human and life happens. I become a lot more consistent and rigorous when I suspect a bird is ill to better track their progress, as usually the first sign of illness in exotics is weight decrease. Fluctuation is okay, but once when you bird looses about 10% of their body weight, red flags and they should be seen ASAP.

If you’re starting to want to weigh your bird for the benefits it brings in welfare and early detection of emergencies, a good place to start is once a week every week to get into the groove. What I would recommend is when your bird goes to sleep, take out their food. Then, when you wake up, weigh them, give them their food after. That way it’s a true weight once a week! Ideally, and especially for more sensitive and special needs birds, you would do this everyday. Again, any weigh in, even if it isn’t true weight, holds value!

Weight logs show so much information. How I do mine is on excel spreadsheet. I have the date, time weighed, the birds name, weight in grams, and then any other notes. Other notes include abnormal behaviors, droppings, mannerisms. Other information is to support the medical diary so I could look back if a bird crashes and get a better timeline to relay to my vet for better diagnosis and treatment. I will also put in the notes if it’s true weight or not to also remind myself when I was slacking.