Do you have any rope toys in your bird’s cage?
You could accidentally be putting your feathered family in danger without even realising! Many birds LOVE to chew and often will chew on rope if placed within their cage. When chewing on these fibres, most birds spit them out, but sometimes they will swallow them.  Over time (or with large amounts), the synthetic fibre can build into a large knot, and cause an obstruction.  Especially higher up in the gastrointestinal tract, like the crop, fibres tend not to degrade.   Surgery is often the only solution.

Here you can see an incision has been made into the crop, you can immediately see a large lump of material that isn’t meant to be there.

The offending material. This bird will be feeling much better with this out of its crop. This would predispose a bird to crop infections, will often result in weight loss (as they can’t eat as much), and can sometimes cause nasty ulcers in their crop wall. Not allowing birds to have access to fibres to chew is one way we can try to keep them safer.

To keep your bird safe stick to wooden, plastic, paper, cardboard and leather toys!