Corny Observation

[MiloJacks]

I like to put out food for the squirrels that live in the backyard and have tried several types. One of the bags of food I had bought at a pet store contain a large amount of corn. After a few days I noticed that they would eat the sharp point of the corn kernel but not the rest. It makes me wonder why bags of squirrel food have so much corn in it? When I switched to a bird mix that was heavy on nuts, without any corn, they eat it all. I also drop a few raw, unsalted, in the shell peanuts on top of each food pile. They seem to be very fond of these.

[Meglos]

It makes me wonder why bags of squirrel food have so much corn in it?Need you ask? It's relatively cheap! :)

[Snipe]

Yeah what you noticed is true, they only eat the heart of corn kernels unless they are really starving.

Corn has very little nutritional value but many pet foods are loaded with it because of it's low cost to volume ratio

[Charles Chuckles]

It is the part they eat called the "germ" kinda like wheat germ, the most tasty part

[TexanSquirrel]

They put the corn in because it's cheap is my bet. Looks like you're getting a nice full bag for the money.

[PBluejay2]

It's my understanding (I almost always begin that way because I've been wrong so many times (one for you Freeze), that the end of the kernel (closest to the cob) is what has the embryo (where all the protein is) and the rest is basically there to protect, support, and feed the embryo as it sprouts. But besides that, corn has a calcium to phosphorous ratio of about 1:13 and isn't good for them at all. These store-bought feeds are more attractants than diets.