Just don’t feed wild animals
would a cat count as a wild animal
I would argue that cats aren’t exactly domesticated. More like tamed perhaps.
What about feeding a wild thang
I keep seeing this but as far as I can tell the only study on the subject seems to show that it has no effect on their normal grazing patterns and that both domesticated and wild ducks heavily fed bread spend 90% of their time “naturally grazing”
https://absa.asn.au/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Cor-Vol-35-Pg101_106-Ducks.pdf
It’s basically just duck junk food. https://www.uu.nl/en/background/what-to-feed-ducks-according-to-science Probably not an issue if they don’t get too much, and still get plenty of good quality food in. I’d still rather give them something good for them, but I’m glad it’s not as terrible as it seems.
Totally agree, it’s just that there is a lot of pearl clutching when it comes to this topic and we need a more balanced approach.
A little bit of bread is not going to hurt them, but maybe there are some other options that are better. But if they get fed some bread, probably don’t need to have an aggressive confrontation about it
Ducks can have a little bread.
Right? Let us be the fun uncles and aunts that spoil our duck nibblings with junk food. We don’t get to see them enough as it is.
In my defense, the only time I gave ducks bread was one time a gang of them surrounded me. One started biting/pecking my toe while the other was jumping up snatching at the sandwich I was eating. It was ducking extortion!!
That’s fair, I’d probably throw the sandwich and run.
Idk I tried to feed ducks with some frozen peas, and those fuckers just spat them out.
Just like people, some like them, some don’t! I usually let them thaw first, so I’m not sure if they’d like them still frozen. Maybe that was a factor?
There’s these two identical swans at the local park named Tom & Jerry that have been there for years. One of them loves peas and will gobble them straight from your hand (if they know and trust you,) but the other one will go to eat whatever you’re giving them from your hand, see/smell that it’s peas, and their head flies back and they violently shakes their head like “NOPE!” It’s hilarious! I love those goobers.
You get little cans of peas that you can keep in your car in case of duck sightings
I would love to explain my Emergency Peas to people who saw them.
I appreciate you and your peas, but that could kill someone if you crash, much better to put the can in the glove compartment or boot.
God, there’s one in every fuckin thread 😂
It’s in the boot
One what, person who shows concern for the safety of whoever is in your car (and that of whoever decides to follow your advice)? How utterly horrific that must be for you… 🙄
It’s pretty obvious it’s in the boot though if you look at the image. It’s in something made of plastic, it’s dirty, and it’s with a first aid kit.
Sorry to be blunt but the pseudo-intellectual above just assumed I was stupid enough to keep a loose projectile in the car. I mean it’s pictured next to a first aid kit.
I shouldn’t have to post a disclaimer every single time along with a pic. “Here’s my car-peas for ducks. Please note that they are secured in the boot of the car where they cannot injure anyone and that feeding peas to young ducks creates a choking hazard and your ducks may be at risk if you do not keep up payments. Anyway enjoy the amusing picture and don’t have nightmares”
A lot of people make the world worse while thinking they’re making it better
Based on the meme in a freezer you have in your car as it seems it must be frozen peas otherwise they will fight you to death.
I should explain, due to my experience in this matter. Frozen peas are better, simply because they float. Canned peas sink, so you can only throw a few at a time
That said, I’ve seen what I am sure was a duck getting brain-freeze from the frozen ones. Can’t be sure but I didn’t imagine the stinkeye
All we are saying, is give peas a chance.
as a treat, many ducks love blueberries! it shouldn’t be their main food though. I had a duck that would go wild for blueberries.
I thought the reason they say not to feed ducks bread was because they would get used it and flock to city centers.
Mainly they flock to bakeries. Once they’ve tried the artesianal stuff they come up with all kinds of crazy hijinks to get it. It’s really a nuisance.
“Ok that’s seven loaves of sourdough- Wait. I’m gonna need to see some ID.”
(Reasonable quacking sounds)
“Dang it. It’s ducks in a trench coat again. Third time today.”No bullshit, the local crows know when I’m baking sourdough now. They smell it, I guess, and they know that I’m a soft touch. I usually do little batches of “discard” pancakes, and share a few with them.
They have, however, decided that they will only visit the side yard because of our chicken. She rules the back yard, and they won’t fuck with her. So there’s this solid mass of iridescent black on that patch, just cawing and waiting until I open the damn window.
I like crows lol.
For a few years, I had a crow friend who liked to perch in the trees across the street. I would yell hello, and they would caw back. They were great, I always have them my food scraps. Stopped coming one day, and I really miss them. I hope they just found greener pastures somewhere.
Oh yeah, crows are survivors. If they moved away, it’s because something better drew them. They don’t abandon a solid resource without a damn good reason.
Now teach them to bring you money for your bread
If only!
I find it funny that my local family of crows will gang up on and harass the living shit out of any hawks that dare to show up in the neighborhood, but a single bluejay (like a third their size) will chase the whole family off in no time. Bluejays are some tough motherfuckers.
I love crows and I feed peanuts to my local family, but they’re still extremely skeptical of me after more than a year and won’t touch the peanuts until I go back into the house. I keep reading that they give gifts to humans they like but they haven’t left shit for me - except one time when one of them puked up whatever he had just eaten so he had more room for the peanuts.
I also make sourdough. Maybe I should try giving them some of that.
(Reasonable quacking sounds)
thanks for the good chuckle. 😁
It’s practically an epidemic.
I was always under the impression that ducks liked to eat at Subway.
In most countries you’re not allowed to call Subway cake “bread” so that’s ok
That’s just because they eat for free at Subway.
what if I feed them human flesh?
Just be careful; once they get a taste for man, that’s all they’ll want from then on.
i saw this problem with pigeons too, in the cities most of them are malnourished (diarrhea, which got better with seeds). If you ever go to the countryside you’ll see they have much better health. Next time i go to a city i’ll make sure to give corn or seeds to ducks as well!
Isn’t all bird excrement diarrhea? They excrete from a cloaca that is both feces and urine mixed, so it’s liquid.
From personal experience no. Also google gives me diarrea in pigeons as a symptom of disease, not as normal stuff
the ducks round here go wild for oats
cheap as hell tooWhat about mealworms
Mealworms are the shit! It’s like my milkshake bringing all the birbs to my yard.
We have signs saying the same all around our local park. It seems to stop no one :(
I’ve obviously changed this habit but my grandma taught us that the first and last piece of bread in the loaf was the “bird bread” and she would take
us out to feed the birds with it.I imagine others were taught something similar and we haven’t all caught up to how bad it is.
It’s not really that bad though, like people make out it’s killing ducks and ruining ecosystems but none of the studies show that, they’ve even shown that for urban ducks it can help give nutrition that they’re lacking due to the built up environment.
I really think this is just a viral message started by anti-bread natural health obsessives, like bread is processed and unnatural therefore must be bad for you and even worse for animals - when studies showed that ducks were fine digesting bread the justification came that the reason not to do it was that bread will pollute rivers and causes a cascade of doom but again this was demonstrated to be totally untrue and so the story changed again to say ducks can eat bread but it makes them lazy, which again there’s no evidence of - now it seems to be trapped in a very vague ‘it’s not their natural food and if they only eat bread then that would be bad so really is better to feed them something else in the same way eating bread isn’t the best thing for humans but has been a staple for thousands of years and it pretty good in a balanced diet, certainly better than malnutrition’
I always see stuff like ‘bread isn’t their natural food, feed them grapes, peas, nuts, seeds’ like grapes or peas are something ducks regularly eat or a handful of seeds isn’t every bit as bad if they get lazy and don’t eat anything else beside the easy seeds (which there’s no evidence of)
urban ponds with lots of duck feedings on bread don’t have obvious problems, you’d think by now someone would have attached statistics or studies to this message but there isn’t any, I’ve read up on it a couple of times and never found any, all the serious authorities like the rspb seem to agree that it’s not really a problem but in theory there are circumstances where it could be suboptimal… While also agreeing that in some situations, urban winter for example, feeding ducks is really important and if the choice is bread or nothing then bread is by far the best choice.
It’s fine and good to feed ducks stuff that isn’t bread and it’s great to be breaking the weird thing of only feeding ducks bread, varied diet is important… but if you see someone feeding them bread then don’t go off at them because it’s bit really a problem.
If you’re feeding wild ducks, especially in urban areas, you temporarily raise the number of the environment can sustain. If no-one feeds them later there can be a shortage of food. Feeding ducks should is definitely not as dangerous as portrayed, but it is also incorrect to say that it doesn’t affect them at all. Feeding ducks should be done in moderation.
But that’s true of feeding them anything, and the only real reason the duck feeding will stop is if people spread misinformation about it being bad for them.
I agree there are lots of theoretical ways we could create unlikely situations by overdoing things but there is no evidence anywhere that throwing a few bits of bread to ducks when you take your kid to the park is causing any problems at all.
The post is wrong and I hate seeing wrong information spread. I love the energy behind it and the intent
What nutes do those foods have that the bread does not? Isn’t white bread usually enriched?
Corn: probably the Potassium
Lettuce: water. That’s honestly why we use lettuce in human food. Well that and the crunch.
Seeds: protien/fat
Peas: some potassium, iron, vitamin B6, and vitamin C
Oats: good carb/fiber/protein balance
Source: Chef that isn’t fat. I’m not skinny either, but I know enough about the nutritional content of the foods I make to graze without getting more than a little chub
Doesn’t enriched white bread have a lot of that stuff in it though?
It does, but I don’t know if the duck can actually digest it, and the protien, fat, and liquid content is very minimal.
I’m a chef, Jim! Not a veterinarian
Lol okay. I was just curious, is all. I see those signs all over town where I live and always wondered about them.
Bread is a good and easy source of carbs. Even if it has other nutrients, the duck is going to be consuming far more carbs than it should. While the other things have carbs, they aren’t nearly as bio-available. It’s like drinking juice that’s had a bunch of sugar added and thinking it’s healthy because it’s juice. Carbs are the thing that’ll make you fat, regardless of what other nutrients come with it.
