If you have a pond or lake nearby you, you most likely have ducks. A lot of people think feeding ducks bread is a good way to get rid of stale bread, without wasting it. However, feeding ducks (and other birds) bread has shown to do more bad than good.

Bread, and a lot of other foods such as potato fries, chips, and cereal, have little to no nutritional value to ducks. They consist mostly of carbohydrates, and while those are necessary to survive, ducks often get too much of it through being fed bread. This fills them up and makes them eat less of more nutritionally packed foods. It’d be like a human living off nothing but junkfood. You’ll survive, but you won’t thrive, and eventually you’ll end up with a plethora of health issues such as malnutrition.

Ducklings especially suffer the consequences of a bread-rich diet. The bread they eat does not provide them with all the necessary nutrients they need to grow up to become healthy, strong, big ducks. They need greens and insects instead, but if they eat nothing but bread, they won’t forage for these foods like they naturally would. It can also cause them to develop a condition called Angel Wing. This condition causes the wings to jut out instead of folding up, which can make flight impossible. This deformity is often caused by malnutrition, especially a lack of vitamin D, vitamin E and Manganese. The condition makes the wings outgrow its wrist joints, and is usually incurable by adulthood.

A duck with angel wing

Another problem with feeding bread to birds is that they don’t always eat all the bread. You might think one person feeding them a little bread isn’t harmful, and you’re right, just one person doing it isn’t that bad. However, these persons add up. Imagine if you, your neighbors, the local kids, elderly people strolling through parks and young people walking their dogs all fed the ducks half a loaf of bread. Some bread will not be eaten, and this will cause massive pollution problems in the pond. The bread will become moldy and smelly, which spurs the growth of algae. Too much algae will crowd out the other aquatic plants, which in turn decreases the other food sources for ducks.

So what can you feed ducks?

Feeding the ducks can be an amazing experience. It’s a great way to teach young children about compassion and wildlife, and let’s be honest: ducks are really cute. But it’s best to just not feed them at all. Ducks will be fine foraging for themselves, as long as there is a healthy amount of insects, seeds, and plants nearby. But if you do insist on feeding them, pick one of the following healthy foods:

Grapes (cut them up before feeding them, whole grapes can be too big)

Oats

Cracked corn

Barley

Bird seed (try to find one specially made for aquatic birds)

Frozen peas or corn (defrosted)

Shredded lettuce

Duck pellets

If you do have leftover bread that you want to get rid of in an environmentally friendly way, you can toss it on the compost pile. Compost is a great source of natural fertilizer, and a compost pile will encourage and help a lot of other wildlife such as insects and birds. If the bread is still edible but just really stale, you can always use it to make toast, croutons or breading. You just have to put it in the oven to get all the moisture out and you’ll be good to go.