What does wild boar eat? Now let's try to understand this issue. So, wild boar is an omnivorous animal, the diet depends on the habitat, as well as on the availability and accessibility of feed. Such a beast does not have constant, year-round nutrition. This wild animal obtains the feed that is currently available.
What does a boar eat?
Firstly, these are underground parts of plants, that is, roots, tubers, rhizomes and bulbs. Secondly, they eat nuts, berries, fruits and seeds. Thirdly, the vegetative aerial parts of plants are included in the diet of this animal. What does a boar eat, in addition to what we have already listed? These are animal feeds (fish, frogs, earthworms, larvae, mollusks and more).
All this food in wild boars varies depending on geographic location and season. Most of the feed (animal feed, underground parts of plants) is in the soil, not on the surface.
Spring
What does a wild boar eat in the spring forest? Animals feed on soil invertebrates and underground parts of plants. During this period, such animals feed on the rhizomes of the highlander, gravilate, dandelion, oak grove, and also pick up last year's acorns. When there is enough grass everywhere, that is, in May-June, the wild boar begins to eat greenery, as a rule, biting the upper part of the stem and the rosette of leaves. He is especially eager to eat touchy, swamp thistle, dicotyledonous nettle and stinging nettle, as well as gravilate. It should be noted that wild boar eats sedge only in May, since at this time the leaves are still very tender. In April-May, the wild boar goes to glades and meadows, a little later it goes into alder forests, in which there are a lot of not only plant food, but also animal feed.
Summer
What do wild boars eat in summer? During this period, the diet of animals increases. They begin to mainly eat animal feed, that is, larvae and earthworms. In summer, they use it several times more than in the spring season.
Fall
What does a wild boar eat in the fall? The main diet in this period is acorns, but only during the harvest years. In the period of crop failure, this animal eats rhizomes of hygrophilous plants that grow in floodplains of rivers and in alder forests.
During this period, wild boars begin to eat vertebrates more often (usually mouse-like rodents). In autumn, and also at the end of summer, this omnivorous animal eats in the fields, eating rye, potatoes, oats and other similar plants.
Winter
What does a wild boar eat in winter? As a rule, during the thaw, this animal eats plant rhizomes, and when it is cold, it ruptures the rhizomes of trees and shrubs.
There are also forced feeds: branches, dry grass and mosses. Such food is not adapted for processing and assimilation by the digestive system of wild boar.
Features of nutrition in the mountainous regions of the Caucasus
In these places, wild boars can feed on the underground parts of herbaceous plants all year round. With special hunting, animals eat the rhizomes of Ivan tea in the spring. Fruit wild plants have been of great importance in the nutrition of omnivores since the end of summer. In June – July, these animals pick up cherries, and in August – September, they eat plum, as well as apple and pear pickers.
The basis of autumn and winter nutrition is acorns, chestnuts, as well as beech and walnuts. In deep snow winters, wild boars eat bark from trees, the land parts of plants, as well as their rhizomes and earthworms.
Since the end of summer, wild boars are moving to the fields. Their main feed is wheat, gourds and rice (in the north of the country), as well as ears of corn.
In the first place of animal feed in the diet of wild boar is fish (especially in late spring). Sometimes wild boars destroy the nests of coots, geese and other birds, and also eat rodents (water rats, field voles, etc.). During the locust period, they switch to feeding on such insects.
