Risky Mistakes Revealed: Avoid These Mistakes When Feeding Birds and Hedgehogs

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Finding food becomes challenging for wild animals during the cold months. That’s why many people provide food to support them. It’s a kind gesture, but unfortunately it’s not always so good for the animals. Improper nutrition can even be fatal for little hibernators.

Mistake 1: Feeding the birds with bread

Because of their misunderstood love of animals, many people feed ducks and other birds with bread. They often don’t realize that leftover bread can cause problems for furry animals. Although waders and waterfowl find the bread delicious, the salt it contains can swell in their stomachs, causing severe stomach pain. In general, you should not feed your baked goods to birds, because birds suffer from improper nutrition and in the worst case, they can die.

How to feed birds correctly:

Sparrows, titmice and finches love to eat grains and seeds. Therefore, they are satisfied with sunflower seeds, peanuts, grains and seeds. Food should be absolutely unspiced. You can also find grain mixes in specialty stores. Blackbirds, thrushes and little wrens eat soft foods; They especially like pears, apples and dried fruits.

If you want to feed ducks humanely, you should only offer them small portions that fit their beaks. Ideally, you would give waterfowl food on land to avoid contaminating the water with additional nutrients. In addition to special waterfowl feed, lettuce, boiled potatoes, tomatoes, grapes, bananas and oatmeal are also particularly suitable for feeding.

Mistake 2: Not cleaning the bird feeder

Diseases can spread rapidly in an unclean eating area. Birds can contaminate feeders with their droppings. If you have a bird feeder, you should definitely clean it regularly. Therefore, it is more convenient to hang food in the form of a feeding bell or cereal dispenser.

Mistake 3: Preparing food for hedgehogs

Healthy hedgehogs do not need any additional food. The spiny creatures only hibernate when they run out of food. Feeding hedgehogs in late autumn or winter can prevent them from hibernating. But for hedgehogs this is absolutely necessary, so you should not feed small wild animals.

However, there is an exception: If your hedgehog wakes up too early from hibernation, you can definitely feed it. They can find almost no food on the frozen ground. Therefore, you can give a malnourished hedgehog moist cat food, boiled eggs and unsalted cooked meat to eat. In exceptional cases, supplementary feeding may also make sense for young hedgehogs.

Mistake 4: Feeding squirrels peanuts

Squirrels generally do relatively well on their own in the winter. But if temperatures stay below freezing for an extended period of time, you could use some help.

Some squirrel lovers mistakenly feed sweet rodents with peanuts and almonds. It’s not healthy for the squirrels either. Instead, you can please rodents with hazelnuts, walnuts, dried corn or sunflower seeds. Pumpkin seeds, raisins, and fresh fruit such as apple pieces or grapes are also beneficial. Meanwhile, young animals need nuts because they can’t crack them yet.

Source : Blick