Um, ew. Poop eating.

Sparrow has this really awful habit of eating poop, his own. I try to stop him but sometimes I am too late. What do I do??

I heard it's a nutritional deficiency or digestion issues. The source where I read regarding the nutritional deficiency stated that the bird tries to recoup some of the nutrients lost by eating it's own feces. For the digestive side, apparently the bacteria in the poop aids breaking down food, and offering grit may be helpful.

Apple used to do it, and then I started feeding him a VARIETY of foods, and he stopped.

Hmmm, I wonder how much more diverse I could get! Thanks for the info, of all my birds he has the biggest diet! I wish it was just him being gross.

GlassOnion wrote:

I heard it's a nutritional deficiency or digestion issues. The source where I read regarding the nutritional deficiency stated that the bird tries to recoup some of the nutrients lost by eating it's own feces. For the digestive side, apparently the bacteria in the poop aids breaking down food, and offering grit may be helpful.

Apple used to do it, and then I started feeding him a VARIETY of foods, and he stopped.

That's what I've read also. I've seen a lot of pet store birds do it, which is kind of depressing.

Technically, it's called coprophagia. Sounds nicer, right? Well, maybe not.

As far as I can tell, it happens in all kinds of animals, and whenever it gets raised on a forum or Q&A site or similar place, the first thing that gets mentioned is nutritional deficiency. That seems like a reasonable hypothesis, but when I've tried to find out what kind of actual evidence exists, as far as I can tell, most studies that have been done (dogs, horses) have come to no definitive conclusion or the conclusion that it is behavioral. And by definition, unless there is a digestive insufficiency, any useful nutient that was in the food has already been removed by the time it becomes poop. Coprophagia seems not well understood in even our more well-understood companion animals. I did see one result in dogs suggesting it may have a correlation with deficiency in digestive enzymes. This makes more sense to me, as do hypotheses related to repopulating "good" bacteria. Boredom/attention-getting also seem like viable possiblities, especially in birds. But the bottom line is, in MHO, if your feeding program is good, I wouldn't assume it's a dietary problem.

The usual advice is limit access to the feces, do a general health exam and attempt to address any known deficiencies in diet, exercise and mental stimulation. Not much help. If you don't have a cuttlebone or mineral block, you could see how that goes over. I'd also avoid making a fuss when the bird is doing it, since making a fuss seems capable reinforcing almost anything you don't want a parrot to do.