The assumption has always been that rainy weather is good for ducks. Now a three-year study funded to the tune of £300,000 by the taxpayer has proved it.

Two scientists from the University of Oxford gave a lucky group of farm ducks access to a pond, a water trough and a shower. They discovered that the ducks spent an awful lot of time under the shower, sometimes just standing there, others drinking from it.

Perhaps inevitably, the revelation that ducks seem to enjoy water washing over them has not impressed everyone. Susie Squire of the Taxpayers' Alliance, called the research a "bonkers waste of money".

She said: "It is common sense that ducks like rain and water. The last thing the government should be allocating scarce resources to is this sort of nonsense."

The Devon chairman of the National Farmers Union, Anthony Rew, said the study proved that Defra, the government department that oversees the care of farm animals, was – wait for it – "quackers".

He said: "They need to get out of London and get on a farm to see how the countryside works, to put policies in place that are practical and well costed. If they asked a farmer, he would tell them ducks like water."

It would be wrong to suggest the criticism washed over the scientists and Defra like water off a duck's back – but they did defend it stoutly.

Marian Stamp Dawkins, professor of animal behaviour at Oxford, said many would have expected the ducks to spend most of their time swimming in the pond. In fact, they seemed to prefer the shower to the pond, suggesting they were not very bothered about swimming.

She said it was unfair to portray the study as finding out simply that ducks liked water. It had been carried out to find the best way of providing water to farmed ducks because ponds quickly became dirty, unhygienic and took up a lot of water, making them environmentally questionable.

Defra insisted that the study did go further than just establishing that rainy weather was good for ducks, arguing it was all about making sure that farmed birds were well cared for.