A Baby Panda's Diet

A newborn panda cub weighs 3 to 5 ounces and is about the size of a stick of butter, according to the National Zoo Panda Facts. The cub is born pink, hairless and blind and is considered the smallest mammal newborn relative to its mother's size. Considered completely helpless at birth, adult pandas grow up to weigh more than 200 pounds.

  1. Milk and Milk Porridge

    • A panda cub may nurse on mother's milk for eight to nine months. Pandas can give birth to twins, but usually only one survives, unless the multiple birth occurs in a zoo. Panda zoo keepers help take care of the cubs by feeding them milk porridge made from boiling rice. The mother panda still gets to take care of both pandas, but she can only care of them one at a time because it requires so much effort.

    First Solid Foods

    • Between seven and nine months, baby pandas get their first taste of tender bamboo stalks, which is their main source of food in the wild. A captive giant panda cub's diet includes sugar cane, carrots, apples and sweet potatoes. Special "panda bread" is made from a mixture of ground bamboo, grains and assorted vitamins and minerals and is also a food fed in captivity.

    Panda Diet

    • As the baby panda grows, his diet expands. Leaves, stems and shoots of various bamboo species make up 99 percent of his diet in the wild. Other plants, fruits, occasional rodents or musk deer fawns make up the rest of their daily feeding. Pandas eat 20 to 40 pounds of bamboo each day, which can take up to 10 to 16 hours a day to eat.