It’s no secret that most animals love pumpkins! Your local zoo or wildlife sanctuary will be giving their furry denizens pumpkin treats to chomp on.
I’ll always remember a dear friend’s front porch “pumpkinapping” mystery. The family created a charming fall porch display with straw bales and pumpkins, scarecrows, and a few skeletons. Next morning, they found all of their pumpkins had vanished. Turning to their porch cameras they found the culprit, a family of wild boars, javelinas, had carted them away. They found the remnants of their feast strewn along the side of the road.
Our wild friends aren’t the only ones who find chomping on the orange gourd a pleasure. Cats, dogs, birds, and most barnyard creatures will eat up the hearty treat.
We could write pages on recipes for and the effects of pumpkin on our furry friends. We’ll leave that for further inclusion in our Pumpkin Pets section as we build it up, and instead give you a few bits of information and a recipe for some of our most common four footed and winged family members.
Pups love pumpkins! Our friend at Petmd.com and the American Kennel Club have some great notes on the benefits of pups eating pumpkin. Loaded with vitamins such as A, C, and E, Iron, and potassium, this fruit is also great for a pup’s digestive system and often used for alleviating both constipation and diarrhea.
Take a look at our Pumpkin Pets section for the Pumpkin & Peanut Butter Dog Biscuits. Two delicious flavors which have even us humans licking our lips! If you’re always on the go and want to make things easy, we highly recommend using one of the many excellent pumpkin puree brands available year around such as Farmer's Market Organic Pumpkin Puree or Nummy Tum-Tum Pure Organic Dog & Cat Supplement Pumpkin for your pup biscuit bake.
Kitties? Yes, serve it up! As always with our feline friends, some will love it, and the finicky eaters will be more than a bit suspect. Straight pumpkin puree is fine for cats, and as with dogs, it’s a great source of nutrients, vitamins, and digestive ailments. Mix a small amount of pumpkin puree with your kitty’s wet food, or even kibble as a treat (if it’s a flavor they take to). Pup’s also love this food mix treat.
Guinea pigs? The cravy creatures enjoy a small cube of raw pumpkin to chew on, but don’t overdo it! Once a week during pumpkin season is fine. And please, don’t feed your sweet one pumpkin seeds. They present a choking hazard and get stuck in their wee little teeth. For more info and some fun information on these little guys, take a visit to GuineaDad.com.
Chickens love, love, love both fresh raw or cooked pumpkin meat and seeds. Cut your raw eating pumpkin, a Casper, Cinderella, Jarrahdale, Sugar, or Red Warty will do just fine, into sectionals. You can leave the rind on. Or, you can cut up the pumpkin into manageable sections and bake until soft. Either way works just fine. Please make sure, however, that your pumpkin is fresh and free of mold or rot.
Horses, commonly being of sweet tooth, are always up for a treat! Just witness their reactions to a fresh apple or carrot. Check out Pumpkin Pets for a tasty Pumpkin Oat Horse Treats recipe. You can use human grade molasses, or all the all natural blackstrap molasses often used in horse feed. Make sure to use only orange pumpkins, as not all pumpkins and squash are safe to feed horses.
And now a bit of something for our winged companions. From the always insightful pages of one of our favorite publications Birds & Blooms, comes a very easy and beautiful DIY bird feeder as suggested by a reader. Cut a small pumpkin of the edible variety in half and gut out all the seeds and webbing. Drill a few holes in the bottom of the pumpkin for aeration, and fill it with bird seed. Hang it outside and watch what happens.
As with any outside display of pumpkin majesty, whether as décor or a bird feeder remember that a source of food will inevitably serve as a welcome mat to all sorts of outdoor critters, even those you may not want to welcome! If you live in an area with bears, deer, javelinas, squirrels, rabbits, raccoons, or skunks, expect their visitations.
Also, be prepared to keep tabs on the “health” of any cut pumpkins in feeders for the appearance of mold. Once you see any sign that the pumpkin is rotting with mold, immediately dispose of it.
Remember those remnants of the javelina feast at the beginning of this blog? In a testament to the hardiness of the pumpkin, a series of vines grew during the summer months. Then late that season, among the long green tendrils appeared two large pumpkins!
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