what can i feed my ducklings

[Knighstar679]

I have fed mine live crickets, plus think have eaten ants, stink bugs, and misquitoes. They aren’t to picky about their bugs.

 

[nao57]

I would think there's a way to get them to clean the insects out of the garden, because there's a bunch of videos of Japanese rice farmers using ducks to clean the bugs off their rice paddies. They are cool to watch.

However, I don't know what training methods they used.

You probably could science it out by seeing which garden vegetable plants ducks aren't interested bit by bit and see which they don't like. Then plant more of those and less of the ones they like. (But I wonder if you do this wrong in testing them, you might accidentally train them to go after certain things.)

Also, I wonder if the rice paddy cleaner ducks were trained to only go after insects? This part I'm not sure of, though I highly doubt. But it would be part of the scientific process to think about which foods they were trained on. Its possible also there's more chaperoning early on to steer them towards some things and away from others. Possibly also it could be there's something to how they steer them. You could have partitions also.

I'm guessing that once you get ducks hooked on grain, that its harder for them to want eat grass. (I mean, I don't want to eat grass either XD.)

And trying to get them to eat bugs won't be a problem. You could get them to eat grasshoppers I think? And virtually everything else buggy. I've heard they will eat mosquitoes and flies also. (Yay?) (But this is what I've read...I'm still somewhat new with new ducklings. But the stuff I saw is up on Youtube. And its interesting. I'm fascinated with how curious they are.)

Oh, I will tell you one thing. My ducklings are almost 4 weeks old now. When they were almost 3 weeks old, I was trying out different forms of material as bedding substrate. I tried out newspaper. Anyway the section, I put down down was I think catalog pages for some kind of manufacturing catalog in black ink. It was quite hilarious that the ducks seemed to think the black ink pages of machines on the pages were bugs. After all they were weird shaped and black right? So of course they are trying to snap them up as if they are bugs.

The one bug they probably shouldn't get involved with would be fire ants, bees, and wasps probably?

 

[Magnolia Ducks]

I would think there's a way to get them to clean the insects out of the garden, because there's a bunch of videos of Japanese rice farmers using ducks to clean the bugs off their rice paddies. They are cool to watch.

However, I don't know what training methods they used.

You probably could science it out by seeing which garden vegetable plants ducks aren't interested bit by bit and see which they don't like. Then plant more of those and less of the ones they like. (But I wonder if you do this wrong in testing them, you might accidentally train them to go after certain things.)

Also, I wonder if the rice paddy cleaner ducks were trained to only go after insects? This part I'm not sure of, though I highly doubt. But it would be part of the scientific process to think about which foods they were trained on. Its possible also there's more chaperoning early on to steer them towards some things and away from others. Possibly also it could be there's something to how they steer them. You could have partitions also.

I'm guessing that once you get ducks hooked on grain, that its harder for them to want eat grass. (I mean, I don't want to eat grass either XD.)

And trying to get them to eat bugs won't be a problem. You could get them to eat grasshoppers I think? And virtually everything else buggy. I've heard they will eat mosquitoes and flies also. (Yay?) (But this is what I've read...I'm still somewhat new with new ducklings. But the stuff I saw is up on Youtube. And its interesting. I'm fascinated with how curious they are.)

Oh, I will tell you one thing. My ducklings are almost 4 weeks old now. When they were almost 3 weeks old, I was trying out different forms of material as bedding substrate. I tried out newspaper. Anyway the section, I put down down was I think catalog pages for some kind of manufacturing catalog in black ink. It was quite hilarious that the ducks seemed to think the black ink pages of machines on the pages were bugs. After all they were weird shaped and black right? So of course they are trying to snap them up as if they are bugs.

The one bug they probably shouldn't get involved with would be fire ants, bees, and wasps probably?

Mine eat fire ants bees and wasps. A bug is a bug. They are very cute chasing butterflys.