How Much Will My Ducks Eat?

A question that a lot of people have, including those that have been in the waterfowl community for a while, is how much ducks eat.

Please keep in mind that these are approximations of what a duck will eat if given free choice of a balanced ration and will vary according to temperature, exercise, and genetics.

Pounds of Feed Per Day Per Duck
	Week 1	Week 2	Week 3	Week 4	Week 5	Week 6	Week 7
Pekin	.07	.23	.35	.40	.45	.50	.55
All Others	.05	.10	.15	.21	.27	.33	.40
Runners	.05	.08	.11	.15	.2	.25	.30
Mallards	.04	.06	.08	.10	.13	.17	.20

Pounds of Feed Per Day Per Duck – After About 12 Weeks of Age
	Laying Females	Non-Laying Females and Males
Pekin	.48	.40
All Others	.40	.35
Runners	.30	.25
Mallards	.20	.15

We hope this helps you in making feed and feeding decisions for your birds.

Getting Your Ducks and Geese Ready for Winter

As the wind cools and the pumpkins start to smile, you know that winter is coming. Time to prep for the cold weather months.

Fortunately, getting your waterfowl ready for winter is much easier than prepping chickens. Unlike chickens, waterfowl are winter hardy. This does not mean that they don't need some additional help though.

Insulation

The requirement for insulation depends on your location. Most waterfowl coops do not need insulation unless your winter nights frequently get down to 15 degrees Farenheit or less. Otherwise your birds just need a shed that has plenty of bedding and protection from winds. Heating is only required to keep temperatures above 0 degrees.

While it is easy to go overboard and make the coop air-tight, you want to make sure that there is adequate ventilation. Moisture from body heat and runoff from the snow is far more dangerous to your birds than the cold weather as it can invite mildew and bacteria. If you can smell ammonia in your pen, it does not have adequate ventilation.

Visit our Ammonia page for more information.

Bedding

For really cold areas, an extra layer or two of bedding in the coop will help to keep your birds toasty at night. Duck farmers in Poland, for instance, rely on a deep layer of bedding as it adds heat as it slowly composts. Remember to add more bedding as it becomes dirty.

Water and Feed

All animals need a source of drinking water. If you have extremely cold weather, you need to provide drinking water every day or keep your waterer from freezing.

Make sure you protect their feed from rain and snow. Otherwise the moisture may spoil the feed and cause illness in your birds.

For some fun with their food, try hanging a head of cabbage or ball of alfalfa with wire. Do not use sting or twine as they will attempt to eat it. They'll have fun pecking at the vegetables or hay

while having a nice treat.

Snow

As mentioned above, waterfowl are very winter hardy. Their down, the same stuff used in our pillows and comforters, keep them warm. If their feet become too cold, they'll sit and bring their legs up close to their body to keep warm. Normally ducks would rather spend their day out in the snow than inside. You will be amazed at the amount of time they will spend out in the snow.

Fun!

Ducks and geese can get bored – especially if they are kept inside during extremely cold weather. With snow covering their usual play area and most of the foliage dead, there isn't much for them to do. Solve this by placing a pile of hay in their coop or any play toys like a hanging ball that they can investigate. The hay will give them an extra layer of insulation while giving them something to play with and eat. Get creative!

Predators

The winter months are a prime time for predators to try for your birds as there are fewer wild animals for them to hunt. Check the fencing of your run and repair as needed. If you do not have a top on your run to protect from air attacks, try to provide cover. Bushes and even picnic tables work great. Keep access to the coop available at all times during the winter.

The best thing to do during the winter months is to keep an eye on your birds and adapt as you go along. If you find it is too cold in the coop, take measures to warm it up. If the feed is spoiling, find a way to keep it dry. Don’t worry! Winter does not last forever and taking measures to protect your birds will make the time both pleasant and quicker.

Hardware Disease

 

Ducks and geese are omnivores. If they think it looks interesting, they will try to eat it. This especially includes shiny things like coins, staples, nails, scrap metal, and the like. Obviously, this is not good for their health and can cause some severe problems. The issues caused by the ingestion of metals is collectively known as Hardware Disease.

While the objects themselves can cause damage, such as a sharp nail piercing the lining of the stomach, it is the poisoning from the metals as they breakdown that is the real problem. Symptoms include but are not limited to:

• Loss of appetite
• weight loss
• weakness and lethargy
• bright green or bloody droppings
• difficulty walking
• seizures
• death

Poisons are typically fast-acting and once symptoms begin to show they should be treated quickly by a veterinarian. We have a list of veterinarians by state on our website that are knowledgeable in waterfowl care. If a veterinarian is not on hand or not feasible, there are some things you can do to help. Countryside Daily suggests feeding your ducks molasses or charcoal pills to flush out the toxins. Lisa Steel of Fresh Eggs Daily advocates more for prevention, though she does list several herbs such as bay leaves, dill, sage, and thyme mixed as a salad to help detoxify. For objects that would not pass naturally, such as a metal springs or larger pieces of glass, they will require surgery.

The best way to prevent hardware disease is to remove any potential objects your birds might eat. This means monitoring the pen or pasture for anything they might dig up or find. If there has been a building project, make sure all screws, nails, and staples are picked up. To be very thorough, a metal detector would be of help.

Example of things we've found laying around.

Feed Mill

For both commercial farms and backyard hobbyists, feed mills are a necessity of life. Feed mills are able to consistently produce quality feed for our animals with the nutrition they need. But what actually occurs in a feed mill?

L A Hearne has been our source of feed for over 30 years and we were recently invited for a tour of their mill located in King City, California. Their manager, Mike Hearne, was very enthusiastic about showing us around, starting with the outside of the mill.

Marc Metzer on left, Mike Hearne on right

Every Thursday a train car rolls in with a delivery of corn which is emptied into a vent under the rails. The corn is then transferred to their grain storage building which contains different kinds of grain including corn, oats, barley, and rice.

Train car that carries the feed.

The mill caters to hundreds of customers including feed stores and other commercial growers, all with different feed needs for different animals ranging from our ducks, to horses, to rabbits! The feed is usually sold in bulk to commercial customers and put in 20, 50 and 80 pound bags for their feed store customers. All our feed is delivered in bulk - meaning it is augered directly from the feed truck into our feed tanks, and each truck has 24 tons of feed.

Feed truck delivering feed to our farm!

Bag for rabbit feed!

Some of the grain storage.

Determining what grain and additives to use and in what quantities in a feed ration is a fairly complex process with several factors needed to be taken into consideration. We will cover this in another post in the future.

Feed is made in batches of two tons. Prior to being ground and mixed, all the grains are sent through a sifter to remove any broken pieces of grain and any contaminates. The sifted grains are then sent into a grinder in preparation to be turned into pellets. Different vitamins and minerals are placed in bags beforehand, ready to be mixed into the ground grains. We were lucky to be visiting that day as they were mixing our feed!

Mixer in the floor mixing ground grains.

Vitamins and minerals going into our feed!

Mike showing Marc the mixer.

The complete, ground ration is called a mash. For some chicken and swine feed, this is the product’s final form. For others, the mash is flash steamed to increase the temperature and then, pushed through a pellet die, kind of like frosting through a piping tip. As the ropes of feed emerges from the die a knife cuts it into pellets of the desired length. By flash steaming the feed, all of the bacteria is destroyed, leaving a clean food source.

Pellet die prepped.

Feed being pushed through the die and forming pellets.

The pellets are then sent through a dryer to remove any leftover moisture, preventing mold. For more information on mash, pellets, and crumble feed, take a look at our post on the different forms of feed.

The final product is then packaged and shipped to customers and feed stores.

Mike manning the sewing machine.

Bag of feed heading for the shipping dock.

Thank you LA Hearne for a tour of your mill! Keep up the good work and see you next week!

What Causes Runts?

The word ‘runt’ has a lot of negative connotation to it. Runts are thought of as weak and sickly. I’m here to tell you that this is not true! The official Google definition of a runt is “an animal that is smaller than average”. A runt is just a smaller version of the same breed. That doesn’t mean it is sick or weak, just small.

What causes this? Our veterinarian’s theory is that it has to do with the flora in the gut. Everyone has bacteria in their stomach, both good and bad. The good bacteria colonizes in the stomach and helps with digestion. Runts, however, do not seem to have as much good bacteria or it has the wrong kind of bacteria colonizing in its gut. This means that it doesn’t digest its food as well and therefore does not grow as fast as its siblings.

There is a way to fix this. By providing the correct probiotics, runts are capable of catching up in growth with the rest of the flock. You can find probiotic supplement packs at your local feed store or Amazon. The probiotics help to develop the good bacteria in the bird’s gut that will help with digestion and facilitate growth. You can mix this in the communal feed as the extra probiotics may benefit your other birds, too.

Other potential causes include hatching from small eggs, viral infection, genetics, coccidiosis, and bacterial infection during incubation. While these are valid causes, our veterinarian believes they cause far fewer runts than improper bacteria in the gut.

For further information, Andy Schneider, the Chicken Whisperer, has an article in his Chicken Whisperer Magazine that goes further into probiotics for poultry. While this article is about chickens, the same applies to ducks and geese.

The main question is what this means for you. If you are a commercial producer, we suggest culling the runts if only because their growth rate will be off of your expected processing date. For example, Pekin are ready for processing at 7 weeks, but your runt may not catch up until about week 12.

The following picture is from one of our customers, a Hutterite colony in Montana in 2014. They and other colonies order Pekin ducklings by the thousands and you can clearly see in the photo that there were several ducklings that were not growing as fast as the others. They were 4 weeks and 4 days of age for the picture. When it came time for processing at 12 weeks, however, they could not tell which had been the runts!

If your main concern is egg production, a runt’s egg production start will probably be delayed. If the runt is treated, however, and catches up in growth, they should be on time to start laying with the rest of the flock.

Both the meat and eggs are still good to eat. Remember, a runt is simply smaller.

Whether your birds are pets or not, make sure you keep them all fed, watered, and warm. It will take time for them to catch up in growth, but it will be worth it in the end.

Determining How To Supplement Your Duck’s Diet With Niacin

-John Metzer

There are four easy ways to supplement your bird or flock’s diet with niacin (vitamin B3) if you feel it is necessary: tablets, liquid, vitamin packet or Brewer’s Dried Yeast. We will explain how to supplement with each of these.

We are going to assume:

1) Your current feed has no niacin and therefore we we have supply 100% of their niacin needs. This is not accurate as all poultry feeds have some niacin but this way you know the maximum you should supply and we found no research that indicates a double or triple dose of niacin will harm your birds.

2) Your bird is eating about .35 pound of feed a day. This is typical of a Pekin at about three weeks of age when niacin deficiencies normally appear. Other breeds are probably eating .2-.3 pounds per day at the same age and an adult laying Pekin is eating about .45 pounds per day.

Niacin Tablet

If your duck is eating .35 pounds of feed per day and they need about 55 parts per million (ppm) of niacin a day, this means they need about 9 mg of niacin a day (.35 x 55 / 1,000,000 x 454 x 1000)).

Tablet

Most tablets contain 500 mg of niacin. So if you divide 500 by 9 you get 55. This means that one tablet can supply enough niacin for 55 doses. Those 55 does can be used for 55 ducks in one day or 55 days for one duck. Or you can simply mix it into feed. If one dose is for .35 pounds of feed, then one tablet is for 19 pounds of feed (.35 x 55). Just make sure you grind the tablet well and ensure it is mixed thoroughly in the feed.

Liquid

Liquid B3 Vitamins

In one liquid supplement product we found, there were 12 mg of niacin in 10 drops of liquid. This means that each drop has 1.2 mg of niacin (12 / 10). Therefore, the daily dosage is about 8 drops (9 / 1.2). The problem with adding niacin to the water is that ducks typically don’t drink all the water they use. How much do your ducks splash and waste? Of course if you use nipple waterers waste is minimal and you can assume they drink all the water they use. Then you can add liquid niacin to their water. As they drink about .17 gallons per day at this age, then you need to add 47 drops per gallon of drinking water (1 / .17 x 8). Of course you can always add eight drops to each duck’s feed each day. But don’t mix more than one day at a time as the increased moisture might lead to mold which is not good for waterfowl.

Poult Vitamin and Mineral Packet

Another alternative would be to use the PoultVitamin and Mineral Packet we sell. This packet has 7500 mg of niacin in it and is designed to be added to 128 gallons of water or 1/2 teaspoon will treat 3 gallons of water. If you treat using this method, your birds will be consuming about 10 mg of niacin a day (7500 / 128 x .178) in addition to supplemental levels of other vitamins and minerals.

Brewers Dried Yeast

There are two types of Brewers Dried Yeast – human grade and livestock grade. Human grade has 5 mg of niacin per 15 grams of yeast (one tablespoon). Livestock grade has 1.5 mg per 15 grams of yeast. So if your duck needs 9 mg per day, they need slightly less than two tablespoons of human grade (9 / 5) or 6 tablespoons of livestock grade yeast (9 / 1.5) per day. If you want to mix the yeast in 50 pounds of feed, you would need to add 285 tablespoons of human grade yeast (50 / .35 x 2) or 855 tablespoons (50 / .35 x 6) of livestock grade yeast. As there are 64 tablespoons in a quart, this amounts to 4.5 quarts of human grade or 13 quarts of livestock grade yeast added to each 50 pounds of feed. As this is a significant amount of feed you have added to a balanced ration, you have now thrown off the balance of all other nutrient levels. Hence it is probably best to add additional niacin with tablets, vitamin packets or liquid niacin.

Brewer's Yeast

As stated earlier, these formulations are for a bird that is not getting any niacin in its feed. This is not realistic so if you are wanting to merely supplement in case your feed is short in niacin, then you may want to add half the recommended amounts of supplemental niacin. In addition, niacin deficiency problems normally only occur when your birds are growing at their most rapids rates - from two to seven weeks of age. Therefore, supplementation is rarely needed past ten weeks of age.

Mold in Your Feed

We all want good clean feed for our birds, but sometimes mold has a tendency of appearing. Knowing what is dangerous, how to identify it, and how to treat it is a priority should you come across a mold problem in your feed.

The mold itself is not what is harmful to your birds. It is the mycotoxin byproduct that is harmful. It is a microscopic toxin undetectable to the naked eye that is extremely poisonous in very small amounts. Mycotoxins can have adverse affects on your birds including unusual stools, deformed eggs, weight loss, a compromised immune system, lesions on the body and internal organs and just general unthriftiness and poor production. Unfortunately waterfowl are more susceptible to mycotoxins than chickens or turkeys. Therefore, you must be more vigilant in terms of mold.

Mold and their resulting mycotoxins can develop anywhere in the production process of the feed. It can start in the field where the grain is grown and harvested. It can start at the feed mill where the grain is ground and mixed into your feed. It can start while it is sitting on the shelf in your local feed store. It can start where you keep the feed once you buy it. The bottom line is there is no one definitive place your feed can produce mold.

Prevention is the best defense against mold. Mold grows best in damp and dirty areas, therefore, keep your feed in places that are dry and clean. You will have a harder time in humid climates to prevent mold, but it can be done by being diligent in how and where you store your feed.

If you buy your feed sacked, there is not much you can do other than buy from a reputable source, keep it as dry as possible, and use it within a month. You have much more flexibility, however, if your feed is being made for you. Ingredients can be added to absorb mycotoxins or kill mold and you can test your feed for mycotoxins before it is fed.

The most commonly added ingredients are aluminosilicates such as clay and bentonite which bind the mycotoxins allowing them to pass through the bird with minimum absorption. Newer additives include complex indigestible carbohydrates from yeasts. These ingredients must be added during the formulation of the feed to ensure it is uniformly spread throughout the feed. Other ingredients like propionic and other organic acids can prevent the growth of mold and resulting mycotoxins.

Testing of your feed for mycotoxins by sending samples to a lab is recommended if you have a concern. You can also purchase kits that you can use yourself to determine if your feed contains molds or mycotoxins. These kits can be purchased from companies such as Bioo Scientific, Romer Labs, or Charm Sciences Inc. Many of these kits are quick and easy to use to detect common mycotoxins. If you are purchasing truck loads of feed, you can test the feed before accepting it from your supplier.

If you ever find mold growing on your feed, you need to throw away the moldy feed. Otherwise you are taking a great risk in feeding it to your birds. As stated previously, prevention is the best way to deal with a mold issue. Buy from a reputable company that tests for mycotoxins, keep your feed dry and use it within a month.