Can Ducks Eat Mealworms?

Yes — and of every treat on this site, mealworms are the one closest to what a duck would choose for itself. They are real protein, not sugar and water, which makes them the most useful treat a keeper can offer and the one that most needs a limit. British readers should know that dried mealworms are illegal to feed to poultry in the UK, pet ducks and hens included.

The short answer

Metzer Farms, a California duck hatchery, is enthusiastic: “Ducks love slugs, snails, flies, earwigs – you name it, they’ll eat it”, and on mealworms specifically, “If you really want to give the little guys a treat, worms are a fan favorite. We offer Happy Hen Treats which are freeze-dried meal worms! They slurp them up like spaghetti.” Cornell’s Duck Research Laboratory notes that ducks with room to forage “may be able to survive, grow and lay eggs by consuming available food such as green plants, insects, snails, frogs, and table scraps.” A mealworm is a beetle larva; a duck dabbling in a pond edge is eating its relatives all day.

What is in a mealworm for a duck

This is the treat with real nutrition in it. A 2020 study of mealworm larvae in the NFS Journal found fresh larvae to be about 70 per cent water, “10.4% of fat and 13.7% of protein” as fed, and on a dry-weight basis 45.6 per cent protein and 34.5 per cent fat — with the protein “in the range of the values reported by other authors (41.0–53.2%)”. Dried mealworms, which is what most people buy, are close to that dry figure: roughly half protein, a third fat. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s report on edible insects summarises it as “the protein, vitamin and mineral content of mealworms is similar to that in fish and meat.”

Set that against a duck’s needs — 20 per cent protein in a starter, 18 in a grower, 16 in a layer, on North Carolina State University’s extension figures — and you can see both the appeal and the risk. A few mealworms top up protein for a moulting or laying duck. A lot of them tip the diet towards fat and away from the calcium, niacin and everything else in the complete feed.

How to feed mealworms to ducks

Live mealworms are the better food: a wildlife feed supplier notes that “dried mealworms are anyway a relatively poor substitute to live mealworms – which are rich in fluids as well as protein”. Live ones also move, which is the whole entertainment. Drop a few on the water and watch.

Dried mealworms are convenient and keep. Two rules. Soak them: the same supplier’s advice for birds is to “soak them in warm water for at least 30 minutes”, because “the dried mealworms will absorb liquid in the stomach of the young bird” — a dry, absorbent food is the wrong thing for a bird that eats fast and drinks after. And ration them: Dr Jacquie Jacob, a University of Kentucky poultry extension specialist answering on the national Ask Extension service, was asked how many mealworms a chicken can have and replied “I would not give them more than a small handful a day, and only at night after they have eaten their daily full of the complete feed.” The general rule holds too — treats of all kinds under a tenth of the diet, per Colorado State University Extension — and Metzer’s warning that treats “should not be a large part of your ducks’ daily feed” applies with extra force to a treat this rich. A dozen dried mealworms per adult duck is a generous evening ration.

The UK rule

In the United Kingdom, feeding dried mealworms to poultry is against the law, and the law does not care whether the birds are pets. The government’s guidance on animal by-products in feed states that “Dried terrestrial invertebrates (insects) and processed animal proteins (PAPs) of insect origin cannot be used in farm animal feed or in treats, for example hen treats”. Feed counts as farm animal feed, the same page says, if it is for “any animal kept fattened or bred by humans for food, wool, fur, feather, hides and skins or any other product” — and, explicitly, for “any farm animal species kept as pets, for example sheep or exotic pig breeds”. A pet duck is a farm animal species kept as a pet. The British Hen Welfare Trust spells out the consequence for keepers: “it remains illegal to feed dried mealworms to chickens.” Live mealworms are treated differently — they are not a processed animal protein — and Chitexo, a UK insect-feed supplier, reports that “it is currently permissible to use live invertebrates as chicken or pig feed.”

The rule is an animal-health measure aimed at the feed chain, not a nutrition judgement — and it is now a British peculiarity. As the same supplier notes, “While the EU revised its rules in 2021 to allow certain processed insect meals in pig and poultry feed (EU Reg 2021/1372), the UK did not adopt this amendment following Brexit.” In the United States there is no equivalent: a US extension service answer says plainly that “in the US there is no law against or current concern.” If you keep ducks in Britain, the live tub is the legal one.

When mealworms are a problem

Too many, for the fat and the imbalance. Dried and unsoaked, for ducklings especially. Mealworms from an unknown source — the same extension answer’s advice is to “know the source of your mealworms” — because they can be raised on anything. And the general hazard of any treat, that a flock which learns to hold out for mealworms leaves its pellets. Ducklings should be on starter feed first; a couple of soaked mealworms once they are on grower is a fine introduction, and the plan is in raising ducklings week by week.

For the protein a duck actually lives on, see what do ducks eat and the duck feed calculator. Everything else we have checked, safe and not, is in the can-ducks-eat checker.