So @ramseyringnecks often has to remind people that you can’t feed pigeons leafy greens, vegetables, or fruits, and this is why:
The cecum is an organ that’s responsible for breaking down leafy greens, vegetables, fruits, and fibrous plant material.
Chickens are omnivores that naturally eat bugs, fruits, small animals, grasses, leaves, and just about anything they can find. As you can see above, they’re so adept at grazing on plants that they have two caeca (cecum plural), and they’re BIG. Every so often they expel a brown slimy excrement that is them clearing out a cecum.
Pigeons on the other hand are pure grain and seed eaters. They have a cecum…but much like a dog it’s a little itty bitty blip of an organ near their rectum. They can’t extract hardly any nutrients from leaves or fruits, and attempting to is just hard on their body and wastes energy. They are designed to efficiently break down grains and seeds and shouldn’t eat anything else. A healthy diet for a pigeon consists of a variety of 5 or more seeds and grains, the more of a variety the better but ONLY seeds or grains (with grit and oyster/egg shell of course). In fact, pigeons aren’t grazers like chickens, so another big difference is that they shouldn’t have free choice of food; they should eat in meals unless they’re young and learning to eat on their own or sick.
reblogging this to remind everyone not to feed your pigeon leafy greens, fruits, or veggies. They don’t need them, and they’re harmful! Other things to avoid but are commonly given are:
• dairy products
• parrots pellets/mixes (these are too high in sugar for what a pigeon needs…pigeons are parrots!!!)
• basically any people food, bread, pasta, pizza…things like corn, peas, quinoa, rice, those are okay to share
• worms and bugs
lovingdread 