Don't feed the geese

Don’t feed bread and crackers to geese and ducks.

It’s that simple. It’s not an urban legend. It’s not some kind of wildlife feeding guideline that comes with dietary loopholes.

Ingesting bread and crackers causes health problems for waterfowl. If you fed waterfowl in the past when you visited neighborhood parks and ponds where ducks and geese could be found, don’t feel guilty because you didn’t know. Everyone else was doing it so you thought you could do it, too.

But now you know better.

So don’t do it.

If you need specific reasons to convince hard-to-convince friends or family members that this is a bad practice, keep reading.

Bread, crackers, cookies and all the other food we often seen get fed to waterfowl at parks are the equivalent of junk food for these birds. These foods are high in carbohydrates, low in protein, and lacking nutrients that waterfowl would get in their natural diets. These dietary shortcomings lead to problems.

One of these problems is a condition called “angel wing.” Consuming bread, crackers and other foods of this nature causes a duck’s wing or a goose’s wing to become deformed because the carpal joint grows incorrectly. This leads the wing to stick out rather than fold flush up against the body (hence the name of the condition). Birds with angel wing have great difficulty flying or can’t fly at all. In adult birds, angel wing can be a fatal condition because the birds can’t easily get to their food sources (because they can’t fly). Birds with angel wing are also frequently rejected by their flocks.

Another problem with ducks and geese eating too much bread is that they don’t get enough calcium in their diets. Because of this, they can develop bone problems. Their bones can grow soft, which leads to bones and joints that can break. This lack of mobility can lead to mobility problems, which, in turn, can lead to them getting shoved away from food by stronger, more aggressive ducks and geese.

The best advice about feeding ducks and geese at parks and ponds is not to do it. These birds are very adept at finding natural food items for themselves. However, if you absolutely, positively cannot fight the urge to offer ducks and geese food, give them foods that won’t hurt them. Cracked corn, birdseed, chopped lettuce or sliced grapes are all similar to natural foods that ducks and geese would find on their own in the wild.

Again, the best thing to do is to let these birds forage on their own. If you can’t break your habit of giving them food, provide the food items listed in the previous paragraph.

But do not… and it bears repeating with emphasis… DO NOT feed ducks and geese bread, crackers, or cookies. Bread is great for sandwiches. Crackers are great for soups. Cookies are great for dessert.

None of these are great for waterfowl.

Francis Skalicky is the media specialist for the Missouri Department of Conservation’s Southwest Region. For more information about conservation issues, call 417-895-6880.