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Quality Wild Bird Seed For Your Bird Feeders
Commercial vs. Good Quality Wild Bird Seed Mixes:
Commercial seed mixes that you find
in your local supermarket aren't usually the best for birds or your wallet.
Usually they contain millet, sunflower seed and cracked corn. Cheaper blends
often include a larger proportion of filler seeds that birds will ignore and
toss aside. You can actually save money with a more expensive, richer mixture:
there will be less filler waste and you will attract more birds.
Since mixes contain a lot of millet, if you remember, millet is preferred mostly by
ground-feeding birds. Therefore, if you put in in your hanging feeders,
ground-feeders cannot access it and feeder birds will not eat it. So nobody's
happy.
Make Your Own Wild Bird Seed Mix
If you want a seed mix, make your own
by blending black oil sunflower seed, white proso millet and cracked corn
(2:1:1). Or experiment to attract the kind of birds you would like to see.
Try to make or buy seed mixes that do not have a lot of filler seed like milo and wheat which will be tossed aside by most birds and end up as weed seed in
your grass if your feeder is placed over your lawn.
Milo (aka sorghum) is a red, round, thick-coated, low-fat "filler" seed found in birdseed mixes. Birds typically won't eat milo unless they're hungry and nothing
else is available. It usually will be wasted as birds pick it out of mixes to get to better ingredients. Milo may
attract unwanted cowbirds, starling, grackles, squirrels, rats.
