Many parasites thrive not only in bird seeds, but also in flour, oatmeal and any other whole food. To avoid a (massive) parasitic infestation, you should always store grains and seeds in a way preventing an epidemic spread of parasites.

Recognising parasites
Some are visible to the naked eye. The seeds in the picture on the right are riddled with the capillary threads spun by the larvae of grain moths (see below). The grains stick to one another like beads on a string.

Other parasites cause an odd smell. Still others are big enough to be easily detected, e.g. beetles.

What to do
Throw away infested food, as some parasites may damage your birds' health. Others are harmless to your birds, but could spread into your own food stores. Particularly flightless parasites are very difficult to get rid off. The following paragraphs will give some information on the most common food parasites.

Beetles
Grain beetles thrive in many different kinds of grains or seeds. As they can fly, they spread quickly and efficiently in food storages, unless the infested grains or seeds are stored in air-tight containers. The picture on the right shows a sawtoothed grain beetle (Oryzaephilus surinamensis) next to a 1-(Euro) cent-coin.

Flour mites
These parasites are tiny and cannot be seen with the naked eye. Infested seeds have a mouldy smell. To check your food for mites, try the following: put seeds in a small cup and make sure they form a mound. Leave it undisturbed over night. If the next morning some seeds are scattered around the cup and the mound in the cup looks "flattened", the seeds are infested with mites. Never feed mite-infested seeds to your birds, it may lead to serious indigestions and allergic reactions, in the worst case with fatal consequences.

Grain moths
If you detect a winged mite in your bird food container, it is most probably a grain moth (Sitotroga cerealella). This parasite is about one centimetre (appox. half an inch) long, has brownish wings and a wing span of about 2 cm. It resembles the webbing clothes moth. Grain moths - see picture on right, within red circles - lay their eggs into the food.

Larvae hatch from the eggs. Next, the food is riddled with grubs. These grubs are beige with reddish brown heads and reach a length of approx. 1 cm, see photo on the right. Their silk threads plaster the food up, before the grubs pupate in the food container to evolve into moths.

In theory, food infested with grain moths is edible for birds, if you deep-freeze it for 2 days after detecting the moths or grubs, thus killing the parasites. The birds may even eat the dead moths. Still, it is not very hygienic to stock food containing dead parasites. I therefore recommend to discard parasite-infested grains.

German version of this text: Gaby Schulemann-Maier,
English translation of this chapter: Claudia Neumann.

This chapter in Turkish on muhabbetkusu.org