Your Bird Seed: Farm To Feeder

While there are many companies who sell bird food and garden wildlife products, very few of them specialise in growing and harvesting their own bird seed. Here at Really Wild Bird Food, we manage and oversee every aspect of our bird food production, from sowing the seeds right through to the final cleaning and mixing process.

We have specialised in growing bird seed crops for over 20 years now – ample time to perfect and develop our products so that they meet the highest possible standard.

How We Do It

Planting, growing and harvesting our bird seed crops takes a lot of hard work, but our routine produces high-quality products that our customers and birds love! Here’s a closer look at the steps that go into producing our bird seed:

Stage 1: Cultivating the Land

Many bird seed ingredients are grown as large-scale crops. Preparing a well-cultivated, free draining seed bed is incredibly important when growing bird seed crops as they have a short growing season and therefore need to establish roots and a comfortable bed early on. Finer seeds require a much shallower bed than sunflowers for example, so a variety of cultivators are needed depending on which seed is being planted.

Stage 2: Drilling the Crops

Most of our crops are drilled in spring, as the weather and soil temperatures start to rise. A seed drill is used to sow the seeds in uniform rows at their specific depth. Wheat and oil seed rape are among the first seeds to be planted in Autumn and the rest of the seeds tend to be drilled between March and May.

The seeds need to be evenly spaced, and the soil has to be moist, in order to allow the seeds to germinate. We also use the most time and cost-efficient drilling methods during this process, in order to reduce fuel usage and the cost of production.

Stage 3: Monitoring Growth

Continual monitoring of crops and soil is key to producing great quality bird seed. Farmers will regularly use soil indices to check the levels of phosphate, potash and magnesium present in the soil as well as regularly walking the entire farm to check for signs of pests and disease. This allows them to spot any signs of disruption early on before more wide-spread issues occur. Due to UK air now being much cleaner, we also have to add sulphur to our crops on a routine basis, as it is no longer deposited in raindrops.

Stage 4: Harvesting

The first crops to be harvested tend to be oil seed rape, wheat, naked oats and canary seeds. Red millet, white millet and sunflowers are then harvested from late September to early October, depending on the autumnal weather. Harvesting is done using a combine harvester that cuts and threshes the grains and crops ready for drying and cleaning.

In order to produce combined seeds which are dry, undamaged and in good condition, we use our Claas Lexion combine, which we affectionately refer to as 'Lexi'.

Stage 5: Drying & Cleaning

All seeds have to be dried down in preparation for storage using a drive-over drying floor that passes warm air up through the grains to remove excess moisture. During this process, we will regularly check moisture levels and grain health, in order to maintain crop quality once they have left the ground.

Once this is complete, the seeds then need to be pre-cleaned to remove dirt and debris. This is all performed on our farm, so we can be sure that we have complete control over the final product.

Stage 6: Mixing & Bagging

During the mixing process, we turn our bird seed into high-quality mixes, which are thoughtfully and skilfully put together by Richard. Each product is created to meet almost any feeding requirement and is nutritionally balanced to deliver the greatest range of benefits for your birds.

Once this is completed, we can then bag up our bird seeds to preserve their freshness. Thanks to our ability to match supply and demand, you can be sure that each product has been freshly mixed and bagged according to your order, so you’ll never receive a product that’s been sitting around for weeks.

Stage 7: Dispatching Your Seed

Once all our hard work is done, and each product meets our extremely high standards, we then hand things over to our courier. Pick-ups are arranged every day Monday to Friday, to allow Next Working Day Delivery, and will only take longer in areas that are harder to reach, such as the Scottish Highlands.

Once you have your product, it’s then over to the garden birds, who can judge the quality of our seeds for themselves! We’re often receiving great feedback from customers, who have noticed a massive difference in the number of feeding birds since using our products.