OK to feed pigeons bread crumbs?

[SerendipityCA]

I made finger sandwiches for a memorial service yesterday. I cut off all the crusts and saved them. Some are white bread, some are whole wheat. Some have a tiny bit of cream cheese, or honey mustard, or cheddar/horseradish spread on them, but they're 80-90% just plain bread. Some also have little bits of honey-baked turkey or roast beef on them, though I picked out whatever I saw.

I just popped a bunch into my VitaMix (high power variable speed blender with reversible blades). I made bread crumbs out of them and they came out nice and dry and fluffy.

Is it OK to feed feral pigeons these breadcrumbs? I usually feed them bird seed that I buy at a pet store, but I don't want the bread crumbs to go to waste and they're already paid for :-)

[SerendipityCA]

Did a little research on Google, and apparently it's not a good idea to feed breadcrumbs: http://www.ehow.com/how_2096972_feed-wild-pigeons.html. This site says that they offer no nutritional value and a pigeon on a diet of breadcrumbs can starve of malnutrition.

So, I'm going to cut off any mustard or cream cheese and put the remaining bits in the blender and make breadcrumbs, then freeze them and use them in meatballs, or eggplant parmigiana so they don't go to waste.

[feralpigeon]

Don't know where to get Pigeon Mix in SF, but Lucky Dog in Berkely carries
50lb sacks of Pigeon Mix as does Alamo Feed and Grain. Probably about the
only way to get the mix that makes any sense, anything less would just plain
go too fast. Pretty soon your group will grow, and grow, and grow. You
might have to get inventive about where and how you feed them to avoid
the "pigeon feeding police"....

fp

[SerendipityCA]

Thanks for the info. How much should each of them get each day, if that's all they were eating?

They're very polite, they follow me to the cafe where I sit outside with my dog, and they just hunker down on the sidewalk or in the street in the bus stop, and wait for me. When they realize I'm leaving, they follow me on the ground then when I cross the street they take to the air and land at my feet on the other side. Today Stumpy right got impatient and started flapping his wings and fluttered up to the back of the chair across from me at my table. There was a man sitting at the table next to me...when I got up and three pigeons followed me I think he figured out they knew me :-) Yeah, I'm walking down the street trailing a cloud of pigeons going all "what birds? I don't know these birds. They must have mistaken me for someone else."

I have started feeding around the corner where there is MUCH less foot traffic. A couple of times I have seen police cars and I moved so that a tree blocked their view of me.

What am I getting myself into???

[SerendipityCA]

Sorry, I meant Stumpy Right. That's his name. he's missing his right foot. There's also a Stumpy Left. Then a couple others who know me, so I must have fed them, but I don't recognize any of the other individuals. I'm sure I'll get better at this.

If they get dependent on me, is that a bad thing?

[bluecheck]

You can go back to feeding the bread crumbs if you're not going to use all of it for meatballs. The extra carbs and vit B that's enhanced in the flour is all to the good for the birds. That note you linked to is another of the extreme situations --- where if pigeons eat only breadcrumbs, experts say yada-yada. Well, guess what. If you only feed them wheat, they may starve even if full. If you only feed them corn, they get their own version of pellagra; if you only feed them rice, etc.

It's the only part of it. You seem like a nice person, but there is absolutely NO reason for you not to feed the breadcrumbs if only to cut your cost for buying feed for the birds. The breadcrumbs will make a great treat for them -- I know. For years my own birds would fight like made to grab the bread I'd put periodically into the loft even when they had all the wonderful grains in all the mixes.

[little bird]

Pigeons in the big cities like NYC are always on the verge of starvation so anything with calories is most welcome. NYC has hundreds of neighborhood ''delis'' and those delis are forbidden by law to use day old bread for their customer's sandwich, and the soup kitchens can't use it so what to do with 50 to 100 pieces of rolls, bagels & heros....... sadly ...into the garbage!!!
When our older feeders reach retirement....like me....we cannot afford to buy the wildbird seed anymore....what to do??? Most delis that have to throw their day old bread into the garbage are more than willing to save the bag for a feeder if the feeder will pick it up early AM.....
If the feeder is serious about helping the flock, she will take that bag of bread and shred it to edible flakes so the pigeons can eat it all. Usually that means feeding today what took you yesterday to shred. Particularly in the cold winter months, at least the extra calories mean more body heat for the birds and therefore...survival.

[Larry_Cologne]

Hello Serendipity,

Our city pigeons are quite grateful for bread scraps. They seem to avoid the moldy spots on some pieces I have seen thrown out (some people think pigeons will eat almost anything). They will eat rat poison, since it seems they, like rats, cannot detect it (the blood-thinning or hemorrhaging type).

My impression is that when one asks, can I feed my pigeons bread, the initial and general answer should be "no," because the questioner doesn't know the basics about a pigeon's nutritional requirements, and he should do more research before settling for an easy answer.

When I first rescued two baby birds in April 2004, (they were in a nest in a large flower pot which someone had heartlessly removed from their balcony or terrace and set on the street on a cold day, The parents weren't around, and I took them home lest they succumb to hypothermia). I didn't know what they were. I went to libraries, looked at several bird books (in German), saw no pictures of young birds. Saw photos or illustrations of adult female and male of a species, picture of eggs, info on how many normally in a nest, geographical range of species, everything that would fit on one page per species. Thought maybe I had crows, or blue-jays. Somebody suggested ducks (with web-less feet?). Somebody said feed them canned cat food.

I knew most birds ate seed, so I got some canary seed, and some moistened whole wheat bread. I went to a local senior citizens' internet cafe, found pigeon-life.net (then pigeon.com) because we had pigeons in the city, and it made sense to determine whether they were pigeons. From some photos on another website, I determined they were 3 to 10 days old.

The baby pigeon Chocolate died after 13 days, with abdominal distress. Vanilla (later renamed Pidgiepoo) was with us until January 14, 2005, when crows chased him off at a nearby park, where my wife took him for "fresh air" (recommended by a neighbor) while she shrugged him off her shoulder, jogged a bit ahead (about ten meters), and would wait for him to catch up. We never saw him again, and it was devastating.

When I hear the discussions about white bread, I usually think of kids (human kids. Someone asks, "what do I feed them? Can I feed them bread?" Well, yes, but other things are also needed in the diet.

There are signs posted at our local park, the Volksgarten, which has a shallow man-made lake (more of a pond), telling people not to fed the ducks. Supposedly everyone has bread or sandwiches at a park, the ducks get more bread than they can eat, the bread turns moldy in the water or whatever, and the ducks get sick. (PT member Terry / TAWhatley -- and other members -- would be my reference authority on ducks, who could correct or add to what I say).

Lots of words to say don't make the pigeons live on a diet of bread alone.

One of our feral female pigeons (Mamieke) ate several of our impatiens in our window flower planter (Busy Lizzie, or Fleißiges Lieschen in German) in spring 2006. Ate the flowers and leaves, left only the stems on two of a total of four or five plants. Her mate, our rescued-as-a-baby and hand-raised Wieteke, didn't partake of the plant, and suffered from a bout of PMV paramyxovirus. (Perhaps no connection between the impatiens and the PMV; anecdotal). He recovered, with our help, while raising two babies to apparently healthy adulthood. But that's another long story.

Larry

[little bird]

Fortunately, NYC pigeons have feeders who can afford seed but for us oldsters..$8/20lbs of wild bird is $40per 100# and $40 per month is a lot to us. Usually our city flocks have more than one feeding spot.....my flock were waiting for their crumbs at 8AM and were no where in sight of that spot for the rest of the day.