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Bread for birds
josusa47
Posts: 3,530
I've read, from authoritative sources, that bread shouldn't be fed to wild birds, but no reason given. Can anyone enlighten me?
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Think it's because they need much higher energy food than bread and it's bad for them to fill up on carbs and not the high energy stuff that keeps them warm overnight.
Just very occasionally iI will pour melted meat fat/dripping from a joint over a stale slice of bread and put it out for the pigeons and seagulls but I make sure that the feeders are all full up with sunflower seeds, suet and peanuts as well.
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
Re the bread. it is not good to feed bread to Water fowl as they store the bread in their 'crop' and as they tend to feed inwater the bread swells inside them causing bloating and harm.. Its better to feed seed and grain to birds...I put out a variety of foods, ham fat bacon fat, seeds, apple cores even and they seem to be very fond of it.. Those shop fat balls were never touched..God knows what they contained..
Interesting about the fat balls, ours only get eaten when everything else is finished
our local swans haven’t read about the bread being bad for them and they can be quite aggressive
A A Milne
Last edited: 02 February 2018 13:16:18
Bread is the equivalent of junk food for birds - it's got plenty of energy, but very little nutrition. A bird which eats only bread isn't going to get the vitamins, etc. it needs to be healthy. That said, a little every now and then isn't going to hurt!