What Do Raccoons Eat?

The raccoon is one of the most successful urban animals on the planet and a significant part of that success comes down to what it is willing to eat which is almost everything. Raccoons are true omnivores with a flexible, opportunistic diet that shifts with the seasons, the availability of food, and the environment they find themselves in. A wild raccoon in a rural woodland eats a different menu than a raccoon navigating the back lanes of Toronto. Both rural and urban raccoons share the same fundamental drive to eat whatever is most available, most calorie-dense, and easiest to obtain.

By understanding what raccoons eat helps homeowners explain why they visit your yard, raid your garbage, and target specific parts of your home and property. Every choice a raccoon makes about where to forage is a nutritional decision. A raccoon does not have a preferred food. It has a preferred strategy which is to find the highest-calorie food available with the least effort required to obtain it.

What do urbanized raccoons eat in the city and suburbs?

The raccoons living in the Greater Toronto Area, Mississauga, and Richmond Hill eat a diet that would be unrecognizable to their rural relatives. Urban raccoons have access to a reliable, year-round buffet that wild raccoons would never encounter: human food waste. This is why GTA raccoons are notably larger and healthier than rural raccoons in many studies because the urban food supply is calorie-dense, consistent, and requires almost no hunting or foraging skill to access. Raccoons are known for their ability to lift levers, open jars, and open latches with their five-fingered front and back paws. We recommend always keeping your garbage and compost bins locked up so they cannot access them.

The specific foods urban raccoons target in the GTA include:

• Household garbage: The single most important urban food source. Raccoons are strong enough to tip standard bins and dexterous enough to open most standard lids. A residential garbage bag left out the night before collection contains enough food to sustain a raccoon for several days.
• Compost bins: Fruit scraps, vegetable peels, coffee grounds, and cooked food in open or poorly sealed compost containers are highly attractive to raccoons. Compost is one of the most consistent lures for a raccoon that has identified a property.
• Bird feeders: Sunflower seeds, peanuts, suet, and other bird feeder contents are calorie-dense and easy to reach. Raccoons will knock down, dismantle, or climb to reach feeders at heights most homeowners assume are safe.
• Pet food left outdoors: Cat or dog food in bowls left outside overnight is one of the most reliable raccoon attractants in suburban neighbourhoods. Even a small amount is enough to establish a nightly visiting pattern.
• Garden vegetables and fruit: Corn, tomatoes, melons, strawberries, squash, and almost any ripe garden produce are targeted. Raccoons are particularly associated with corn damage because they pull the entire cob from the stalk, strip the husk, and eat the kernels.
• Fallen fruit from trees: Apples, pears, crabapples, and cherries that fall to the ground beneath backyard trees are a significant attractant throughout summer and fall.
• Fish ponds and water features: Goldfish, koi, and other ornamental pond fish are easy prey for raccoons, which will stand at the pond edge and fish with their forepaws. A single raccoon can empty a garden pond in a few visits.
• Insects in lawns: Raccoons regularly dig up lawns in the GTA in spring and summer searching for chafer beetle grubs and earthworms just below the surface. A lawn with visible turf-lift damage in small patches is often the work of a raccoon foraging for grubs. In these cases, the underlying grub issue needs to be addressed because the raccoons will keep coming back to your yard to dig up and eat grubs.

What raccoons eat in the wild by Season

In a natural setting, a raccoon’s diet is roughly 40 percent invertebrates, 33 percent plant matter, and 27 percent vertebrates and other animal material, though these proportions shift significantly with the season.

Spring — protein after a lean winter

• Earthworms and grubs dug from soft soil
• Crayfish, frogs, and small fish from streams and pond edges
• Bird eggs raided from ground-level and low nests
• Insects and beetle larvae
• Early spring vegetation, shoots, and buds
• Carrion (dead animals) when other food is scarce

Summer — fruit, berries, and abundant insects

• Wild berries: raspberries, blackberries, blueberries, wild cherries
• Apples, pears, and other orchard fruit
• Insects, beetles, and their larvae
• Crayfish and freshwater clams and mussels
• Frogs, small snakes, and salamanders
• Corn on the cob — one of the most preferred foods available

Fall — hyperphagia (hunger that doesn't go away after eating): eating to build fat reserves

• Acorns, beechnuts, hickory nuts, and wild walnuts
• Fallen apples, pears, and late-season fruit
• Corn and grain from agricultural fields
• Berries and wild grapes
• Mice, voles, and other small rodents as plant food declines
• Insects sheltering under bark and in leaf litter

Winter — opportunistic and reduced activity

• Stored caches of nuts and seeds (their own and those of squirrels)
• Carrion and any available protein
• Garbage, compost, and human food waste
• Bird feeders and pet food left outdoors
• Insects found under bark or inside decaying wood

The fall eating surge: why raccoons are most active in autumn

Fall is when raccoon feeding behaviour reaches its most intense and aggressive phase. In preparation for the reduced activity of winter, raccoons enter a state called hyperphagia (definition: extreme, abnormal, and insatiable hunger that does not go away after eating) which is a biologically driven compulsion to eat as much as possible in order to build the fat reserves they will need to survive cold snaps and lean months. In this phase, a raccoon may consume up to three times its normal daily caloric intake.

Fall is the season when raccoon raids on garbage bins, compost heaps, and gardens become most frequent and most destructive. It is also when raccoons that were previously visiting a property occasionally become nightly or even twice-nightly visitors. A raccoon in hyperphagia will work harder and take more risks to access food than it would at any other time of year.

Toronto homeowners who find their garbage bins raided night after night through September and October are almost always dealing with a raccoon in this feeding surge. The solution is not deterrence, it is elimination of the food source through locking away garbage/compost bins, clearing fallen fruit, and storing pet food.

What foods do raccoons avoid

to other animals are consumed without issue by raccoons, whose digestive systems are unusually robust. A few notable exceptions:

• Spicy food: Raccoons have a strong aversion to capsaicin, the compound that makes chili peppers hot. This is one of the few reliable natural deterrents. Spraying hot pepper powder or capsaicin on garbage bin rims or garden beds can deter foraging, though it must be reapplied regularly especially when it rains or snows.
• Onions and garlic: The sulfur compounds in alliums are unpleasant to raccoons and are sometimes recommended as a garden border deterrent, though with limited reliability.
• Very loud or sudden noise: Not a food aversion but a behavioural one. Raccoons are cautious animals and motion-activated noisemakers or lights can interrupt foraging sessions, though urban raccoons quickly habituate to repeated stimuli.

It is worth noting that several foods genuinely toxic to raccoons (this list includes grapes, raisins, chocolate, macadamia nuts, and the artificial sweetener found in sugar-free products called Xylitol. They are foods raccoons may encounter in human waste. These should not be placed in accessible compost or open waste containers.

When food management is not enough to get rid of the raccoon problem

Removing food sources is the first and most important step for raccoons foraging in your yard. But if raccoons have already established a den in your attic, walls, or crawlspace, the motivation is shelter rather than accessing food. A licensed wildlife removal professional can assess, safely remove, and permanently exclude raccoons from the building envelope. Contact Guard More Pest Control at contact@guardmorepests.com to receive a quote for raccoon removal and/or exclusion installation today.