Eating droppings

[S_Toast]

Bucket has started a fun habit of eating his droppings. He picks them off the bottom of his cage or the bars or his perch. Where ever he can find them. He isn't obsessive about it (doesn't do it all day long) but he does do it. I'm guessing changing his cage liner daily will fix it mostly but I'm more worried about WHY he's doing it. Any ideas? Could it be diet related? He's getting Kaytee Exact pellets and has been for the last 4 years or so. He gets fresh fruit and veggies offered but is rarely interested in them. He'll pick out apples or berries from the fruit and won't touch veggies (like a toddler).

[marie83]

Ollie went through a stage of doing that, the vets said in Ollies case it was unlikely to be nutritional, you should get it checked out though. It needs preventing as it can lead to infections, you should be changing the papers at least once a day anyway but we had to increase it to 2-3 times a day, depending on how long Ollie is caged. Its easy enough, just put several layers in and roll the top layer off so the bits dont drop out.

[Eurycerus]

Weird.. I'll be sure to not flip out if any parrots in my care do this. Glad I read this BEFORE this happened to me. How long did Ollie do that?

[marie83]

It was when he first became sick in oct/nov time 2011, initially we thought that was what was causing his illness. he stopped doing it after a month or so but we do clean his cage alot more often now so it might be that as to why we havent caught him doing it.