Does anyone feed only sprouted grains or fodder to their ducks?

[relicshunter]

I have done a 3 grain or 4 grain scratch fermented for 2 days and the ducks liked it. I would make about 3 lbs up and put it in one pen and when they looked like they filled themselves I would move to the next and then next. Hard to tell pros and cons but I stopped doing it because a bag of scratch was more then chicken layer and a little less then all flock. Based on the scratch being less protein and nutrition I stopped since it is basically watering down their food balance.

 

[nao57]

I've done sprouted fodder for ducks. I did A LOT of experiments with it also.

I feel like ducks and waterfowl have amazing potential. Ducks haven't been experimented with as much as chickens have. So that means LESS potential for family members to have food allergies to them. Also some waterfowl like geese use less resources than other poultry. So they are amazing for food potential as the world gets less stable, ALTHOUGH they use more water than chickens.

Back to your question...

I found if I fed fodder sprouts to ducks ONLY, they would stop laying eggs. And part of this is because they aren't getting enough nutrient diversity I think. So if you feed 100% only fodder they can't produce. And they start eating your grass and digging more in the yard; which is a symptom they are hungry. So you can use this and the color of the yolk in their eggs to tell if they are getting enough nutrients. if they have poor nutrients the yolks get more pale or more yellow. If they are nutrient rich the egg yolks get more dark and orange colored.

What I did find out is YES you can save money with fodder and get it to work. BUT you have to add other stuff in. Like for me it worked to do like 80% fodder and then 20% mix of unmilled other seeds of a different type. It seemed to work even better to do like 80% sprout fodder and then a mix of 2 different seeds for the rest. That worked, they produced eggs also then. I wish I'd figured that out sooner though. Its a big edge to know how to produce your own food.

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https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/question-on-fodder-sprout-feeds.1614158/

I have a similar question here asking about it for sheep if anyone has input for it thanks.