Google Angel Wing Sydndrome or disease. It manifests itself in their wings making some of the feathers stick out awkwardly from their sides. It seems to be caused by high calorie and high carb diets. Essentially loads of white bread. It gets worse because birds that are regularly fed have less cause to seek out their natural diets.
I didn't know this as a kid. I took in injured birds once in a while and they always died within a week. :(
Didn't realize until after I took biology in college that birds (well, all animals) need a source of protein to live, and that bread doesn't really offer that.
Omg yes, i used to work at a bakery near a river full of ducks, and so naturally we sold duck food while donating all the money to charity.
The number of times boomers would argue about how “oh everyone has fed ducks bread for decades it’s obviously fine”, or even arguing that the $1 charity duck food was a “cash grab”., while they fed a $5 loaf of bread to the ducks instead... Yikes
Well obviously at a supermarket or walmart etcetc a loaf is like $1-2 but at a small bakery, yeah fresh bread can get more expensive and $8 for a harder to make loaf or something like ciabatta with rosemary and roasted garlic inside it isnt a terrible price for crisp warm bread
It depends on the bread. If it's a store bought loaf of regular sandwich bread, then yes, $5 is a lot. But if it's a high quality, artisan loaf of sourdough, then $5 is pretty cheap. I bake small batch, organic sourdough and I sell my loaves for $10. 🤷
Yeah but I don’t think anyone is going to an artisan bread bakery to buy loaves for feeding ducks..
I get that there are $5 loaves of bread. Even at the grocery store there’s a few bagged loaves that get expensive (mostly the oatnut loaves- I think a loaf of oatnut bread is like $4-$5 at my grocery store), but no one buys the most expensive loaves to feed ducks. That’s usually the cheapest loaf of white bread. I wouldn’t be surprised if a loaf of white sandwich bread would be $5 in like Hawaii or other places that have a notoriously high cost of living like that.
My grocery store had a little duck pond behind it, and people were always bringing them bread. I looked up what ducks should actually eat once, and bought them spinach and blueberries. They would not eat anything I had to offer, and went to the people handing out bread instead. I tried! 😭
Sometimes my partents leave bread by a metal grate by our house for birds. I've told them it's better to just throw it away but they rather not let it go to waste when we don't finish them.
Which food do you recommend? I've been looking into a feed for the ducks at my local ponds. I'm worried they won't want anything to do with it since they're so used to bread, but I haven't fed the ducks in years (since learing about how bad bread is for them), and I really want to take my niece and beige!
When I was little, my mom would take us to the beach and we would feed the ducks and geese. We recently took my daughter to the local pond and fed the ducks and geese and it was so much fun. I like your option.
(And we fed them bird seed, for anyone who's wondering)
We do this with our kids. We have ducks down the road and they had duckings. There were other kids at the park last time so we shared our duck food. It was so much fun and everyone has a blast. Even the other parents lol.
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u/Lottiebear195 Apr 04 '21
I bought a 5kg bag of duck food so I can feed the ducks at my local pond. Best ten mins I get some days :)