Q.What are the differences between captive and wild raptor energy requirements?
A. Wild, free-living raptors eat far more food than captive raptors... they need to do this to provide for their increased energy requirements for searching and hunting for food. The less-active captive raptor, because of its reduced energy requirements, becomes obese if it eats the same quantities of food that keeps the wild, free-living raptor in its optimum body condition.

Even falconry raptors, flown and hunted everyday, do not have anywhere near the same energy requirements as their wild counterparts. Flying, especially pursuit flight, consumes large amounts of energy and the wild, free-living raptors, such as the peregrine (right) put in much more daily flying time than their falconry counterparts.

Exasperating the problem is the fact that as a less active raptor eats less food the individual quantities of essential raptor nutrients contained within the food decrease to the same degree. Unfortunately, some of these individual nutrients are required by the less-active raptor in lesser quantities because of reduced energy usage, but others are needed at constant levels whether energy usage is high or low.

The result is that even if all the essential raptor nutrients are present in a diet, the ideal ratios required between the individual nutrients change as energy usage levels decrease or increase. A diet that is sufficient both in quantities and in relative proportions of individual nutrients at a certain level of intake can become deficient in certain different nutrients when the raptor is fed lesser (or greater) quantities.