Feeding your local wildlife – otters
April 25th, 2015
This is a guide to supporting your local wildlife. These foodstuffs are not suitable for rescued wildlife in captivity, more a list of suitable things you can supplement your furred and feathered friends diet with while they forage for their own too!
Otters eat a variety of foods, but they have a very specialist digestive system which has evolved over the millennia to digest a 99% whole fish diet. They will eat all kinds of things such as eggs, chicken and nuts and even fruits, but feeding them anything but whole fish on a regular basis may cause them liver and kidney problems.
Unless the otter has kits (babies) they tend to move from one place to another following a food source, and will only stay in an area where there is a ready source of food and will move on if there is no more to be caught.
If you feel that an otter in your area needs support, feed whole fish or even fish rigs (skeleton, head, tail, gut and backbone) that the fishmonger cuts the fillets from and then throws out. Do not feed feed them fillets regularly as they need the bacteria and calcium found in what we consider the waste part of the fish!