Feed the Birds

I get asked a lot what Sev the vulture eats, and as your patronage here helps me feed my flock (and rehab wildlife patients), I thought I'd answer some questions about what everyone here eats! 

Question #1 - Does your vulture prefer rotten meat? Do you have to leave it out for a week for him to be interested in it?

This is a common, understandable question. Vultures actually prefer fresh food!  Both yellow-headed vultures like Sev and closely related turkey vultures have an incredible sense of smell which leads them to dinner. Ideally before it's too ripe! Other vultures, like black vultures and king vultures, who don't have this keen sense of smell, but do have more powerful beaks for tearing into tough carcasses, will follow their smaller cousins to these feed sites. Since the larger vultures can't smell a meal, and the smaller vultures can't break into thick hides to get at food, this relationship works well for all parties involved. 

Basically, vultures do have the ability to eat extremely rotten meat - they have incredibly acidic digestive systems and great immune systems - but their best job is in finding and disposing of it before it gets to that point. Fresher meat has much more nutritional value, and is probably more pleasant as well.  Since vultures don't hunt and kill their prey like other raptors, they don't always get a choice in the quality of their meals.  Their ability to quickly find carrion and dispose of it *before* it becomes a mess helps keep the environment clean of toxic contagions, halting the likes of anthrax, botulism, rabies or plague. Vultures do not prefer rotten meat! 

In captivity, vultures generally eat fresh meat. On the menu is whole body prey like mice, rats, quail, chicken chicks, rabbit, and fish. Also items like beef heart,  beef liver, venison, or a specially formulated bird of prey diet. Variety is important, since all of these foods have benefits and drawbacks to them. In some raptors, nutrition is a very exacting science and numbers have to be carefully calculated, but vultures are a bit more flexible when it comes to what they need to thrive. 

Question #2 - What does a vulture consider a treat?
During training, I offer food rewards to all my birds, as one of the ways to provide motivation to learn skills like going into a travel crate or flying to me when I call. In the case of raptors, these treats are just tidbits of their normal diet. So that my birds don't get overfed, I portion part of their daily meal to be given as training treats.   Generally the types of food the individual bird enjoys most, to be a higher value reward. In Sev's case, he really likes liver and little meaty bits of quail like the breast meat. 

Question #3 - Where do you get the food and how much does it cost?

For the raptors, most of my food comes from companies that specialize in raising food animals for zoos, raptor centers, and other institutions. I used one called Rodent Pro a lot, they also supply the University of Minnesota raptor center. They ship mice, rats, quail, and other foods frozen,  in an insulated box with dry ice to keep it cold. 

Here is what a $350, 50 lb box of frozen bird food looks like. It includes rats, mice, chicks, and quail. 

We have a special, dedicated animal feed freezer now, since my husband was tired of mistaking rat tails for popsicles. (It is always a rat.. never a popsicle!)

Exactly how much a bird eats depends on its age, condition, and the weather - it takes much more energy to heat up in winter than it does during the balmy summer months. As a simplification, most raptors will eat 5-10% of their body weight a day, with larger birds eating less for their size and smaller birds (with faster metabolisms) eating much more. Exactly how much to feed varies bird by bird, and is carefully monitored with daily weighings to make sure they aren't gaining or losing too much weight.  Here are some quick averages:

Ruby the red-tailed hawk :  1,300 large adult mice or 320 large rats per year 

Sev the yellow-headed vulture:  1,095 large adult mice or 270 large rats per year 

Stormfly the American Kestrel: 1000 small mice or 325 house sparrows per year

Of course, all my birds eat a variety of prey, and in the case of falconry birds I try to hunt as much wild prey as possible, which is healthier for them. For Ruby, that is squirrels and cottontail rabbits, for Stormfly that is house sparrows, starlings, and lots of insects. Kestrels eat a ton of insects in the wild, so she gets mealworms and crickets in regular rotation, and catches wild bugs outside. Ideally, we are able to hunt enough prey during hunting season to fill the freezer with nutritious wild meats when can then be fed throughout the year until game season starts again. In practice, it is a short season and a supplemental diet. 

That 50lb box from Rodent Pro lasts me a few months and costs $350, and that goes just towards feeding my three raptors. The rodents raised in these conditions are fed a quality, formulated lab diet for ideal nutrition, and are humanely euthanized before freezing for storage. It is not safe to trap and feed wild rodents, since they are often contaminated with rodent poisons.  The rats end up costing more, per pound with shipping, than fancy Angus beef steak. 

The raptor food also gets supplemented with vitamins, generally a special powder called Vitahawk that is sprinkled on, and occasionally calcium. Usually items are fed whole, after being quickly and safely thawed. In the case of baby raptors, things like mice often have to be blended or chopped into a slurry until the bird is old enough to handle cut up pieces, and then finally the entire prey item. For treat tidbits, I cut them up myself, which is often a very messy endeavor. 

 Question #4 - How often do they need to eat?

In the case of the larger birds, like Ruby the hawk and Sev the vulture, they are fed once or twice a day. Vultures are well known to be able to gorge on food when it is available (sometimes eating so much they can't fly) and then fast when nothing was found, but I keep Sev's diet steady, with one day a week of fasting for health reasons. Stormfly the kestrel, with a very fast metabolism, needs to eat three times a day.

Question #5 - What do the emus eat, and how much?

Emus are very flexible in their diet. They eat the same food that our chickens, turkeys and ducks eat (a base of commercial diet, bags of poultry crumbles), supplemented by rabbit food (alfalfa pellets) and lots of fresh greens. They graze when it's available, eating grasses, clovers, and broadleaf plants. They gobble bugs or even small animals like mice or toads when they can catch them.  Emus are exceptionally thrifty, and despite the fact they weigh on average 90-120lbs, they only eat about 1.5lbs of poultry feed a day, less if they are able to forage. 

Question #5 - What do the crows eat?

Crows are flexible and omnivorous, they will eat basically anything edible. Our crows eat a base of high quality dog food, supplemented with a specially formulated bird-of-prey diet and softbill diet, rotated with fresh whole body prey (like mice), insects, seasonal fruits and vegetables, chopped nuts, and eggs.  Variety is the spice of life!  A lot of times I will hide food in puzzles or foraging trays to help keep the crows busy, since they would spend a huge amount of their time in the wild searching for edible goodies. 

In all, it costs us about $500/ month, currently, to feed our flock, and I am currently expanding to start raising our own colonies of mealworms and dubias to prepare to feed songbird rehabilitation patients as they will be coming in next spring.