Common Swift orphans represent a significant number of admissions in rehabilitation centres in Europe. Wildlife rehabilitation centres may encounter difficulties in the hand-rearing of large numbers of insectivorous chicks using the limited, and expensive, commercially available insects as food. These constraints have resulted in alternative and clearly inappropriate diets being used, such as formulas with different types of meat, cat and dog food, or even cheese! The use of these non-insect based diets also sometimes results from a lack of awareness of the impacts, a factor hard to understand amongst professionals.

The Internet is full of sources recommending inappropriate diets for the hand-rearing of chicks, including advice from well known institutions or apparently trustworthy sources. This incorrect information has also reached the many individuals who privately hand-rear chicks found on the street and who may, therefore, be following incorrect husbandry guidelines.

Based on the empirical data from this research, it can be affirmed that non-insect based diets (in this case, cat food and rat mince) are completely inappropriate in terms of survival and final performance.

I therefore strongly recommend discontinuing the use of non-insect based diets when hand-rearing Common Swifts and other insectivorous birds. The use of the correct diets highlighted the fact that all birds had a high possibility to survive even in extreme conditions, thus rejecting any “sacrifice protocol” based on observed poor clinical condition at admission.

Enric Fusté