Cooked egg yolks for wild birds? (1 Viewer)

[JustWondering]

We eat only egg whites and I hate always throwing the yolks away. Is it okay to feed cooked egg yolks to wild birds?

I make a peanut butter/corn meal mix and would add the yolks to that.

Thanks in advance.

 

[chris butterworth]

I can't see why not ( although it's a bit like feeding small children to pensioners. Isn't it? )

Chris

 

[JustWondering]

I can't see why not ( although it's a bit like feeding small children to pensioners. Isn't it? )

Chris

Thanks, I am making some peanut mixture this morning and will add the yolks.

I've read several comments at websites, that it was a form or cannibalism.

 

[Nature__lover]

parents are sometimes forced to eat their own eggs if they are starved anyway

 

[Nature__lover]

read somewhere that egg shells where ok!? :|

 

[Steve Schoech]

We would supplement diets of captive experimental birds with cooked yolks as a good fat and protein source.
And, to nature-lover's comment re. shells, indeed, many birds will eat the shells after young hatch and (this is especially the case for laying females) birds frequently and actively search out sources of calcium. Shells being made up largely of calcium carbonate are favored and many will raid compost heaps for the shells therein.

 

[bearcat73]

I can't see why not ( although it's a bit like feeding small children to pensioners. Isn't it? )

Chris

Just an FYI...an egg yolk is the part of a bird's egg that nourishes the developing embryo. In short, the yolk is what the chick eats. The actual embryo is a tiny spec in the white part.

And it is only an embryo if the egg was fertilized, and the ones you buy at the store are not ....unless you buy farm eggs, then they could be. Anyway, just wanted to let everyone know. I didn't find out myself until I bought an incubator a couple years ago and hatched some chicken eggs.

 

[Barred Wobbler]

My grandfather used to breed canaries in a shed in his garden. Occasionally a bird would refuse to feed her chicks once they'd hatched and then abandoned them. I helped him feed them with mashed egg-yolk with a little butter to bind it, fed to them on the end of a matchstick. The stick replicated the bill of the adult.

 

[Apodemus]

1. Quite right - egg yolks are produced as a food source for young birds, and are not young proto-birds themselves.
2. Even if the eggs were fertilised, with embryos attached to the yolk, one bird species eating another is no more cannibalism than a person eating a pork chop
3. Cannibalism itself is a human, social concept - nothing to do with birds.

 

[Zebs]

They have egg yolk in Canary food, So why not, I think the Crushed eggshells aid digestion.

 

[fugl]

1. Quite right - egg yolks are produced as a food source for young birds, and are not young proto-birds themselves.
2. Even if the eggs were fertilised, with embryos attached to the yolk, one bird species eating another is no more cannibalism than a person eating a pork chop
3. Cannibalism itself is a human, social concept - nothing to do with birds.

Agree wholeheartedly with your first 2 points. With regard to to #3, however, here’s what the Random House Webster’s Unabridged has to say about "cannibal".
1. A person who eats human flesh, esp. for magical or religious purposes, as among certain tribal peoples.
2. Any animal that eats its own kind.

 

[Apodemus]

Agree wholeheartedly with your first 2 points. With regard to to #3, however, here’s what the Random House Webster’s Unabridged has to say about "cannibal".
1. A person who eats human flesh, esp. for magical or religious purposes, as among certain tribal peoples.
2. Any animal that eats its own kind.

I bet that was written by a human though!

I'm not disagreeing with you, or that definition - just with the idea that cannibalism is a taboo that extends beyond some (not all ) human societies. There's nothing inherently wrong with it.

 

[fugl]

I'm not disagreeing with you, or that definition - just with the idea that cannibalism is a taboo that extends beyond some (not all ) human societies. There's nothing inherently wrong with it.

Agree with this, of course (& sorry for bringing in the dictionary but every once & a while my pedantic impulses get the upper hand). That’s the problem with very strong taboos: they tend to bleed over into everything they touch and what’s clearly needed here is a new word without the emotional freight of “cannibal” to describe non-human animals eating members of their own species.

 

[Apodemus]

Agree with this, of course (& sorry for bringing in the dictionary but every once & a while my pedantic impulses get the upper hand).

No problem with pedantic impulses, they're usually a healthy thing.

That’s the problem with very strong taboos: they tend to bleed over into everything they touch and what’s clearly needed here is a new word without the emotional freight of “cannibal” to describe non-human animals eating members of their own species.

I haven't checked the dictionary but I believe that such a word already exists - autophagy.

Mike

 

[fugl]

I haven't checked the dictionary but I believe that such a word already exists - autophagy.

There is such a word, alright, but (according to my Webster's again) it doesn't refer to cannibalism but to the "controlled digestion of damaged organelles within a cell". But, I'm sure you're right in thinking alternative terms for "cannibal" already exist, though digging them out of the technical literature & getting people to use them is another matter.