Christmas is a time filled with delicious sugar cookies, time with the family, and the sweet sounds of Christmas caroling. It’s also a time where Christmas specialties like fruit cake are in ample supply.

Not only is the festive season a time where families get together to enjoy each other’s company but it is also a time when families enjoy Christmas dinners, some family members include pets.

If this is the setup with your pets you may be wondering whether birds can eat fruit cake. This article explores the question of “can birds can eat fruit cake”

Birds can eat fruit cake. This fatty cake will help them gain weight during the wintertime, this added weight helps keep them warm. The fruits in fruit cake deliver a number of vitamins and minerals to the bird. Also, the sugar present in the cake offers birds energy.

Can birds eat fruit cake?

Benefits that fruit cake offers birds:

Birds can definitely eat fruit cake. During the wintertime, birds find ways to protect themselves from the cold, eating a more fatty diet is one way to do this.

Fatty foods help birds gain weight, this added fat layer on their bodies helps keep them warm and also serves as an energy source. Fruit cake is packed with fruits as well as fat.

The fruits deliver nutrients to the bird and the fat plumps them up for the wintertime. 

Fruit cake can contain a number of different fruits including figs, raisins, peaches, apricots, prunes, pineapple, papayas, and cherries. These fruits are an excellent source of sugar.

Sugar is an energy source and birds need energy in every season. Energy is needed for breeding, migration and to regulate the bird’s body temperature when the weather changes between hot and cold. 

These cakes can also contain nuts such as English walnuts and pecans which will deliver protein to birds.

Moderation when serving fruit cake to birds:

Fruit cake may have its benefits, but regularly feeding birds this food is not a good idea.

Fruit cake is like junk food for birds, it helps to increase the bird’s weight but does not offer the bird enough nutrients to be a major part of the bird’s diet, especially growing hatchlings.

This cake should be fed to birds on occasion in addition to healthier foods, this ensures that birds have a more well-rounded diet. 

How to prepare and serve fruit cake to birds 

If you’re feeding backyard birds, you can serve them fruit cake on a clean table in your yard, ensure that this table is visible to birds flying overhead as well as birds in your back garden.

You can also place the cake in any open feeders that already exist in your back garden.

To avoid birds choking on the cake, break the cake into small and manageable pieces. Make the pieces small enough that they can easily go down a birds throat.

For added safety, soak the cake in some water to allow the bird to swallow it easily. 

Fruit cake can last up to 1 month in the pantry so it’s safe to assume that this food can be left out for birds and will not go rancid anytime soon.

That being said, if the cake does go off, you need to quickly throw it away. Rancid food can grow bacteria and cause disease in birds.

Always discard any rancid cake and do not feed it to birds

 

Can birds eat mince pies?

In addition to fruit cake, birds can also eat mince pies. You can feed birds mince pie as long as it is also broken up into little pieces and soaked in water. Just as with fruit cake, this pasty is full of fats.

Fats help birds put on weight for winter, this helps keep them warm. The fats that mince pies are made from are animal fats. Animal fats are superior for birds as they allow birds to add more weight to their bodies, more weight than if the bird was eating vegetable fats.

Fruit pies are also stuffed with fruits such as sultanas, raisins, and currants which birds love. 

Can birds eat sage and onion stuffing?

Onion is a regular ingredient in many stuffings, unfortunately, birds cannot have onions and thus cannot have sage and onion stuffing.

Onions contain sulfur compounds, when birds chew this food the lining of their mouths, crop and esophagus becomes irritated.

This, in turn, causes ulcers and in some cases, causes the rupturing of the bird’s red blood cells, eating onions can also cause anemia in birds. 

In addition, store-bought stuffing generally contains a number of artificial ingredients. It is still unknown whether these artificial ingredients help or harm birds. 

Conclusion 

In conclusion, birds can eat fruit cake, in fact, this human food can be very helpful to birds.

During the wintertime, birds need added fat on their bodies to stay warm during the winter. The high-fat content of fruit cake helps add fat to the bird’s body. You can leave the fruit cake out in the open and allow birds to eat it.

You can also feed birds mince pies, just don’t feed them anything that contains onions 

If you enjoyed this article then you may also be interested in other bird related articles. Here are some articles that you may be interested in: Can birds eat sugar?, Can birds eat digestive biscuits?, Can birds eat ginger?, Can birds eat green beans?