Reply to a post on Next Door Neighbor, regarding feeding ducks bread:
JILL:
While I haven’t opened your link, I’d like to add my $.02 here:
https://www.thespruce.com/is-feeding-ducks-bread-bad-386564
I hope the article in your link says “do not feed ducks/ birds bread”
Bread will expand in the stomach after birds drink, quickly. It will also expand from natural digestive juices. This can rupture the stomach, leading into a significantly painful death.
Specifically regarding ducks vs other types of birds, grains are not part of their natural diet. Most ducks eat algae strands, from the edges of lakes and ponds. Grains complicate wellness and health for ducks. No grains.
Some birds are exclusively meat eaters. These birds too, will suffer kidney failure on grain products, and a host of other maladies. These illnesses are a slow and painful death sentence for these animals.
We should NEVER feed wildlife ANYTHING. Aside from feeding them INCORRECTLY, this activity habituates wildlife to humans. Though this may sound appealing to you, all humans are not kind to animals. Ducks particularly, begin walking up to all humans for free food. As well as malicious human activity as now an added threat to their welfare, their new habits, break from old-form, which also makes them unduly susceptible to predation, both from domestic and other wild animals.
Cat food kibble, is bad for cats! It’s certainly not an appropriate diet for an Opossum or Raccoon. And on that note, never feed multi-colored kibble to anything.
I went to a restaurant downtown Delray this week, and as an attraction, they had a pond of human-habituated catfish. There was a “gum ball-style” dispensary of multi-colored cat food to feed them. I was mortified. If it had Dry Krill inside, or Dry Tubifex Worms within, I’d have felt a lot better. BUT, habituated catfish will overeat, to the point of stomach rupture. There were likely 100 catfish in this tiny pond. I’m rather certain that there are catfish deaths, among the most competitive individuals, eating the “lion-share” of the food tid-bits. While the attraction may not suffer, and the restaurant continues to prosper, think of the individuals that suffers immense stomach pains, before an eventual death.
I am a tougher than average woman in response to pain, but a bad stomach ach, that has me doubled-over, leaves me calling out of work! The kind of stomach pain from a rupture, yields inconceivable pain, unimaginable pain.
Please, just don’t feed the wildlife
see related articles:
https://www.thespruce.com/is-feeding-ducks-bread-bad-386564
https://thehappyscientist.com/blog/feeding-bread-birds
https://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/animals/blogs/why-you-shouldnt-feed-ducks-bread
