It’s time to bin the bread

While bread has traditionally been seen as adequate food for ducks, recent reports have highlighted the terrible side effects of a bread-heavy diet. That’s why we’ve introduced Lucky Duck – the first duck-specific feed formulation in New Zealand.

Let’s face it – bread is junk food for ducks. High in calories and low in nutritional value, it lacks the vitamins and minerals essential to their health. A ‘friendly feed’ actually causes malnourishment and incurable conditions related to vitamin deficiency.

White bread is also destroying duck habitats. That's because a buildup of organic matter in the water can lower oxygen concentrations and increase the presence of toxins harmful to waterfowl, such as botulism. In summers past, periods of hot, calm weather have increased the occurrence of the toxin, and resulted in serious illness and death among duck populations.

Our national habit of feeding bread crusts to ducks is damaging their health and, by extension, our waterways.

Clearly, when it comes to a balanced diet and a healthy environment for our avian friends, bread is not all it’s quacked up to be.

Ducks are iconic Kiwi companions. We share our lakes, rivers, picnic spots and, increasingly, our backyards with them. But our national habit of feeding bread crusts to ducks is damaging their health and, by extension, our waterways.

Ducks eat a specific and naturally diverse diet of plants, seeds and insect protein. Traditionally they’ve had to make do with general poultry pellets when humans take charge of the feeding regime. It’s why we believe Lucky Duck is such a common sense product for families to buy.

This blend works best as a maintenance diet for both wild ducks and backyard ducks. It contains nutritious oats and barley, kibbled maize and sorghum as well as vegetable additions for those essential vitamins.

To have a gander at Lucky Duck click here.