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I just back from vacation. I hire a pet sitting service (like myself) to care for my birds. I bought all kinds of food etc.. to make sure my babies had enough to eat. I had JUST bought avain formula seed. When I was cleaning their cages this morning and ready to add the "new' seed. I noticed there was web worms in the mix plus webbing. YUCKO! I was grossed out and P%$$ed off because it is brand new.I am guessing the sitter might have not seen the worms and fed the birds some of this seed.
Can the birds get sick from this??? I tossed it out and gave it to the squirrels.(It is 50 miles to the store I bought it from so it is not worth returning)

No, they won't get sick. In fact, if your birds are brave enough to eat them it will just be an extra source of protein!!

Most likely what you see is the larval form of the dreded seed moths. I would take all cages outside and power wash or steam clean them. It only takes one to hatch several.

In the future, it is always best to freeze seed for 24-36 hours before feeding it to the birds. This will help keep the moths down.

You may also want to invest in some of the pheremone traps and put them in some throw away cages. These will attract any moths that have hatched and they will get stuck to the traps.

Bummer that it happened while you were gone though.

Same thing happened to me before too.......I bought a new bag of food and at the top you could tell.....looked kinda like spider web on the top of the bag.......I too found out at that time that it is not harmfull to birds, and that they eat insects like this in the wild, so it won't hurt them.....but yeah it's kinda gross! to us anyway!

OMG that is so disgusting!! I know that I would have been freaked out. I have heard like they are saying here that it's ok for them to eat bugs cuz they do in the wild. But just the thought of my precious little girl having a gross, filthy, dirty, disgusting bug near her, better yet in her food is just repulsive to me. I am sure you feel the exact same way. I'm glad you found it, I just wish the sitter would have found it before they fed them out of that pkg

When I bought the bag I inspected it carefully so I can understand why the sitter didn't notice it, and I think she had just opened it. Lucille looked a bit 'off' when I got home thinking it was the wormy food. I paniced and called the vet. Everything turned out normal so she is just probably hormonal (and tired) since she was stuck in the cage for a week with Linus. I put her in her own cage so she can eat and rest. I am always a nervous wreck when ever I have to leave my birds