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I am considering doing this with sparrows too. We have always enjoyed the tweety birds coming into our back yard...now that I have chickens...I hate them. Little buggers won't go away, steal food and poo everywhere. bring in disease and bugs. They can just go away.
Just make sure they are HOUSE sparrows--those are the bad kind. We have House Finches too and I've never had an issue with them in the coop or around it. The Juncos hang around outside but never an issue with them, either. Swallows are great because they eat mosquitoes and other flying bugs.
Not to mention that it's a federal offense to kill native migratory birds, and the kind of thing that neighbors with an eye to making you trouble can use to do so.
As I mentioned above, my observation is that when there's good parasite control among the farm species, it carries over to the wildlings; I suspect this is especially true of using Ivermectin resulting in a decrease in lice, fleas, and mites. It's a pretty stable compound, and breaks down slowly, so that it gets excreted and into the food chain readily. With external parasites, breaking the reproductive cycle leads to a long-term decrease in infestation.
