What you need to know about the diet of ducks
It is believed that ducks are indiscriminate in food, but you should still be aware of what to feed the ducks at home in order to achieve a good result and prevent diseases. After reading the text of this article, you will find out the answers to the most important questions: what do ducks eat? How much do they eat and how should they be fed?
Feeding features
What do ducks eat at home? Yes, in general, everything and you can feed them any feed, even those intended for livestock. Ducks happily eat leftovers from the home table, so you can always prepare them yourself and use them to feed ducks.
What can you feed
Corn is perhaps the most suitable grain for ducks. It contains only 2-3% fiber, so it is highly digestible. Corn can make up up to half of a duck's diet.
- Wheat is a crop containing many proteins and vitamins B and E. Coarse wheat flour is also suitable for feeding ducks. It can be mixed with wet hand-made mash.
- Barley. It is recommended to add barley grain to the composition of the mixture up to 30% of the total mass. At home, they crush it with their own hands, and then they can feed both small ducklings and adults.
- Oats - they promote rapid growth and weight gain at the time of slaughter due to their 5% fat content. In addition, oats contain up to 15% protein, so it is beneficial to give it to both small and adult ducks at home.
- Legumes. How much peas to give when feeding? It is recommended to bring its share to 10% of the total grain mass and give it to the ducks in a crushed form.
- For feeding, soybean, rapeseed, peanut, cotton and sunflower cake and meal are used. The cakes contain up to 6% fat, up to 40% crude protein, as well as enough potassium and phosphates. Eating it, ducks quickly gain weight to the slaughter. How much oil cake and meal can you give? Not more than 10% of the total weight of grain-and-flour components of duck feed.
- Bran. You can save a little on feeding your ducks by giving them wheat bran, which contains up to 12% protein. However, they cannot exceed 20% of the total dry feed.
- Brewer's and baker's yeast. By feeding them, you can saturate the body of ducks with vitamin B.
- Dry bread. Ducks can be fed with dry bread soaked in water.
- Water and meadow vegetation. In the summer, ducks are less expensive to care for because they can be driven to meadows or waterways. Being in the wild, ducks perfectly eat duckweed, pondweed and elodea. Adult ducks can eat up to 0.5 kg of these herbs per day. Ducklings, starting from the age of 5 days, are allowed to feed no more than 15 grams of these plants.
- Green mass. It is useful to add a chopped mixture of clover, field bindweed, peas, alfalfa, young shoots of nettle and blue thistle, which is popularly called the spurge.
- Vegetables. Mashed vegetables (carrots, cabbage, pumpkin) are very rich in vitamins and are also suitable for caring for ducks.
- Animal feed. In nature, ducks eat amphibians, invertebrates, insects and small fish. At home, the food that ducks eat in nature is not enough, so they are given dairy products, meat and bone meal, small fish and flour from it.
- Mineral supplements. Ducks need them to digest their food. This includes: shell, chalk, crushed egg shells, bone meal, table salt, and coarse sand or fine gravel.
What can not be fed
- Finely ground flour should not be given to ducks in mash, because it absorbs moisture and sticks together. When using it for food, the nasal openings of the duck are closed and breathing problems arise.
- Moldy food and bread should not be used when caring for ducks, as they lead to aspergillosis.
- You can not feed the ducklings with cereals, especially dairy, in view of the fact that they quickly deteriorate and lead to a disorder of the digestive system.
- Fresh milk should not be given to ducklings, due to the fact that it quickly turns sour. When eating such food, ducklings begin to vilify.
- When chopping greens with their own hands for feeding, they carefully watch out for poisonous herbs, such as: black henbane, cocklebur, celandine, poisonous milestones and others.
- Do not feed unprepared nettles to ducks, as the glandular hairs of the plant burn the walls of the stomach of birds and cause irritation. The nettle should be doused with boiling water.
- Maple leaves must not be used as food for ducks. They die in large quantities from such food.
Homemade duck food recipes
We will describe several do-it-yourself duck food recipes available. The amount of feed is calculated in grams per animal per day.
Recipe 1. For ducklings from birth to 10 days
- rub wheat - 5 g;
- rub corn - 8 g;
- millet - 3 g;
- boiled egg - 10 g;
- powdered milk - 2 g;
- fish oil - 0.3 g;
- bone meal - 0.5 g;
- meat and bone meal - 1 g;
- fish meal - 1.
Total 30.8 grams per head per day.
Recipe 2. For ducklings from 11 to 30 days of life
- grain mixture - 15 g;
- rub wheat - 30 g;
- rub corn - 40 g;
- millet - 8 g;
- fish oil - 1 g;
- bone meal - 2 g;
- meat and bone meal - 6 g;
- fish meal - 9 g;
- shells - 1 g;
- sunflower cake - 6g;
- yeast - 4 g;
- hay flour - 6 g;
- chalk - 1.5 g;
- salt - 0.5 g
Only 130 grams per day per head.
Recipe 3. For young ducks aged 31-50 days
- grain mixture - 50 g;
- rub wheat - 20 g;
- rub corn - 70 g;
- millet - 19 g;
- bone meal - 2 g;
- meat and bone meal - 5 g;
- fish meal - 12 g;
- shells - 5 g;
- sunflower cake - 12 g;
- yeast - 6 g;
- hay flour - 15 g;
- chalk - 3g;
- salt - 1g.
Only 220 grams per day per head.
Video " Feeding ducks and ducklings "
This video explains some of the intricacies of keeping and feeding ducks at home.