- Article by Wilma Barany
Just for fun I purchased 10 lb. bag of economy wild bird seed at a large retail store to compare to our bird seed mixes.
It was in a nice package and was a reasonable price.
The total cost of the ten lb. package was $4.97Cdn or about 50 cents a lb. Our Mother Nature's Wild Bird Premium mix would be about $8.66Cdn for the same amount of seed or about $0.86 per lb. - about twice as much.
I proceeded to analyze the product I purchased. It consisted of .5% miscellaneous unidentifiable bits, which isn't bad and it was pretty clean. I had expected to find all sorts of weed seeds and I didn't.
This is what was in it:
- Misc. .5%
- White Milo 12%
- White Millet 6.5%
- Sunflower 10%
- Red Milo 46%
- Cracked Corn 25%
Of this mix, the birds will happily eat only the Sunflower and the White Millet.
I wanted to do an honest comparison, so I measured out an equal amount of the purchased mix and our own Mother Nature's Wild Bird Premium mix. I put them side by side using identical bird baths to hold the seed.
After two days all of Mother Nature's mix had disappeared. The other mix was still in the feeder.
After inspecting I found that all of the white millet & sunflower had disappeared from the purchased mix.
The rest was still there. If there are blackbirds or jays around they will eat some of the cracked corn, but it is not their first choice.. The seed was still there after 2 days and remained untouched for a week until I finally threw it out.
After doing this side by side comparison, I decided that the purchased mix actually cost $2.84 per lb. for what the birds would eat. The rest was just cheap filler. In fact the product then cost almost 3 times as much as the Mother Nature's product.
Consider this comparison when you buy your next bag of bird seed. Do you want to see your feeder full of birds enjoying a mix that they love, or do you just want to see a full feeder that never needs to be refilled?
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