Free Sample
The Complete Handbook of Bird Food
A professional's practical guide to selecting, using, and maintaining bird food for health, appeal, and business success
by Alumigogo Books
Chapter 1: Understanding Bird Food
The bag of "wild bird seed" you buy at the big-box store is not a single product. It is a blend of agricultural commodities, each with its own provenance, moisture content, and nutritional profile, mixed to a formula that the manufacturer hopes will appeal to you and to the birds. Understanding bird food means understanding that simple fact: it is a perishable, variable, agricultural product, not a stable manufactured good. The difference between a good feeding program and a wasteful one is almost always a difference in how well you understand what is actually in the bag.
A typical "economy" blend of wild bird seed, the kind sold in 20-pound poly bags at discount retailers, might contain milo, white millet, cracked corn, and sunflower seeds—but not all sunflower seeds are equal. The price of black-oil sunflower seed fluctuates with the North Dakota harvest. Milo is a sorghum grain that many of the most desired backyard birds simply cannot crack or do not prefer. A blend with fifty percent milo will be cheaper to manufacture, but a significant fraction of it will end up on the ground, where it either sprouts, rots, or feeds house sparrows and rats. Understanding bird food means being able to look at a label and see where the commodity costs are, what the filler is, and what the likely "waste fraction" will be in your specific location.
Bird food works in a direct biological sense: it must be edible, digestible, and