How To Make Elephant “Shit Shakes”

Here, Adine mixes a dung smoothie for Khanyisa, step by step!

Another essential addition to the diet of baby elephants – especially as they start to eat more solids – is dung. Particularly, the faeces of their mother or other older members of the herd. For the little orphans at HERD, we not only feed them fresh raw-and-ready dung provided by the Jabulani herd, conveniently right next to the orphanage, but also dung in the form of occasional “shit shakes” – elephant dung water mixed with milk, oil and boiled and cool water.

The purpose of dung in the diet of young elephants (known as “coprophagia”) is to provide essential bacteria that assists the calf in digesting the vegetation that they eat – bacteria that they are not able to produce when they are so young. The bacteria helps to break down plant matter in their intestines and helps to boost not only digestion but also the immune system.