Feed question

[localife]

Do you give your ducks their feed dry, or do you moisten it?
My ducklings are 6 weeks old and I have been moistening their feed since day one because I understood that ducklings have a hard time with dry food, but it occurred to me that I've never heard anyone talk about this being a temporary or permanent thing.

 

[Amiga]

I feed my ducks moist food because I dissolve calcium citrate pills and add the extra calcium to their food. Some folks ferment food, so it's moist when served.

It is important to take up unused feed before it spoils, of course. But our ducks seem fine with moistened food.

 

[localife]

Thanks -- mine seem to like it best when it downright wet, and I am noticing that the wetter it is, the less they spatter it all over the place. Watching them I noticed that when it is dry they bounce it around in their mouths a lot more to try to get it in, but when it's wet they just slurp it up. Makes sense, I suppose, since ducks in the wild seem to be mostly slurping food up in the water. Nonetheless, it is astonishing how messy they are, except when it is greens I am feeding them in a tub. Then they consume every last morsel and stand there looking at me like I must just be forgetting to add more, because surely I wouldn't give them such a delicacy and then cut them off! That would be rude.

I feed them in small feeders so I can rotate out dirty empties and replace them with clean, fresh feed frequently. They know when a new feeder is coming, too, and they get all excited about it. Ducks make me laugh.

 

[jak2002003]

They can eat dry or wet.

They like wet better.. as they can swallow it easily.

The ducks I used to keep always had dry crumbles with some dry rice... once a day by the lake in a pot.. they would take beak full of it and run to the waters edge to make it wet, then swallow it, before running up to get more feed.

My new ducks are just over month old and I am still giving them moist feed... and I decided this time to keep giving them the feed like this.