Ideas on brands of pellets for call ducks coming into breeding season?

[duckluck]

Just thought I'd get the opinion of any duck breeders out there...soon, we will be coming into the breeding season for call ducks. What brands/varieties of pellets do you feed your ducks coming into the laying season? I am using Purina duck Grower/maintenance pellets mixed with some other stuff right now because the store does not carry a breeder formula for ducks. They also get whole oats, cat kibble, dried mixed greens, black oil sunflower seed (backing off on that right now) and brewer's yeast mixed in, with the pellets being the bulk of the diet. They'd be getting some free range stuff too except for the snow right now. And they also have free access to limestone, and also sand when they are outside.

I guess I'm wondering if there is a duck pellet out there that would be better for them right now, and if so, what brand it might be.

 

[TennesseeTruly]

We're using Mazuri breeder for all my ducks and geese. We just switched over from Mazuri Maintainence to Mazuri Breeder last month to prepare them all for the breeding season. Plus they get kale, collards, brown rice & beans, and an assortment of other things as well.

Laurie

 

[briarpatchfarms]

Quote:
I thought rice was bad for birds???

I feed
1/3 Purina Layena
1/6 Cat food
1/12 milo
1/12 rolled oats
toped with wheat germ oil and kelp!

free oyster shell and grit!

 

[Mrs. Turbo]

you could just mix some layer in your mix and you would have a nice mixture for laying...our ducks leave the oyster shell in the bowl so it doesn't work well for us.....back off on some of the cat food because it is really high protein. If you go into laying season with fat ducks they don't breed well and the hens have more problems with eggbound.


Briar-patch......brown rice is a whole grain.....not the same as "white rice"

all we have around here is the duck grower so we feed a mixture also.

 

[TennesseeTruly]

No one in our house eats white anything. No white bread, no white pasta, no white rice. Because brown rice is a whole grain it breaks down very well. We feed it to our parrots as well. It's just a small part of their diet anyway. Greens are a huge part of their diet as well as their breeder pellets. We had added corn for warmth in December but that's limited as well.

We feed alot of whole grains to all the birds on our place, parrots included. We have a flock of 19 parrots.

Laurie

 

[briarpatchfarms]

Briar-patch......brown rice is a whole grain.....not the same as "white rice"

Haha ok just wanted to make sure! makes since that way​

 

[Duck_feeder]

Mrs. Turbo :

Briar-patch......brown rice is a whole grain.....not the same as "white rice"

I always thought the problem with rice is that it expands in the birds' stomachs. Of course that is only a problem if they eat a ton of it at once (like pigeons eating rice thrown at a wedding).​

 

[Mrs. Turbo]

you have to cook the rice before feeding it to them.