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
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