Can you feed dog chow to birds? Yes, but mushy

Let this puppy be your guide.

Questiion: can you feed dog food to wild birds. If so, what kind?

Yes, you can. It should be soft but not mushy.

Answers to these questions recently appeared on BirdChat, a national birding email network.

A curator of ornithology at the Bronx Zoo in NYC said, "Zoo folks feed a lot of dog chow to birds." His nutritionists say it is well balanced, with a more appropriate level of fat than, say, cat chows.
The trick, he said, is to find a brand that soaks up water without turning to mush.

Another respondent uses European Starlings as bait when trapping hawks (for banding, I imagine). The starlings, untouched in the trapping process, thrive on hard puppy food, which must have a high-protein content. Protein content is important. His birds are fat and content, he says, living well to lure another day.

The third respondent, a biologist at the United States Geologic Service in Patuxent, Maryland, suggested Eukanuba Small Breed puppy food. It comes in small pellets with good fat and protein content, she said.