Duck Feed Calculator: How Much Your Flock Eats, and What It Costs

Feed is the running cost of keeping ducks, and the one most people underestimate — because the number they remember is what a duckling eats, and a laying Pekin eats seven or eight times that. This calculator uses the published consumption figures, by breed and by age, and lets you put your own bag price against them. It does not know what feed costs where you live; you do.

Key takeaways

• A laying duck of most breeds eats roughly 0.4 lb (about 180 g) a day by Metzer Farms’ chart; a laying Pekin nearer half a pound.
• eXtension’s university figure for laying ducks is lower — 120 g, a quarter of a pound — so the calculator shows both rather than picking one.
• Ducklings go from under a tenth of a pound a day in week one to a third or half a pound by week seven.
• eXtension reckons 12.5 kg (27.6 lb) of feed to raise one duckling to twenty weeks, and 20–25 lb to raise a Pekin to table weight.
• Foraging ducks eat less bought feed; ducks in cold weather eat more. Every figure here is for free-choice feeding of a balanced ration.

Where the figures come from

Metzer Farms publishes a week-by-week table of feed consumption for ducklings on free-choice feeding, split into four lines: Pekin, Runners, Mallards and everything else. Those are the exact two-decimal figures the calculator uses for weeks one to seven. For adults, Metzer publishes a bar chart rather than a table — laying females against non-laying females and males, for the same four lines — and the calculator’s adult figures are read off that chart to the nearest 0.05 lb. It says so on the page, because a chart reading is not the same thing as a printed number and you should know which you are looking at.

Metzer’s own caveat applies to all of it: these are approximations of what a duck will eat if given free choice of a balanced ration, and they vary with temperature, exercise and genetics.

The second source is eXtension, the university cooperative extension network, in an article by Jacquie Jacob of the University of Kentucky: laying ducks typically consume 120 grams of feed each per day, varying with production level and how much they forage. That is a quarter of a pound — below Metzer’s Pekin and “all others” figures and close to its Runner figure. The two sources are measuring slightly different birds in slightly different conditions, and the calculator shows both because a single number would be wrong for somebody.

How to read the answer

The headline is the flock’s daily consumption at the Metzer figure for the breed and age you chose. Below it are the week, the 30-day month and the year, then bags: how many bags the flock eats in a month, how many whole bags to buy the first time — you cannot buy 2.3 bags — and a reminder that what is left over carries into the next month. If you entered a price, it shows what the feed the flock eats costs a month and a year (365 days), and what the first purchase costs, in whatever currency you typed.

For laying adults there is a second row in gold — the eXtension figure applied to your flock — so you can see the range the published sources span. For a small flock the difference is a bag or two a year; for twenty ducks it is worth knowing.

Nothing you type is stored or sent anywhere. The price stays on your screen.

Ducklings: why the number climbs so fast

A Pekin duckling eats 0.07 lb a day in its first week and 0.55 lb by week seven — nearly eight times as much. That is what growing from two ounces to six pounds in seven weeks costs. Runners and the bantam breeds climb more slowly, and a Mallard barely reaches a fifth of a pound.

The protein in the feed changes with the age too. Metzer’s minimum requirements put starter at 22–22.5% protein for the first two weeks and grower at 17.5–19% from week three to first egg; the table eXtension reproduces from the Central Poultry Development Organisation gives 20% and 16% for the same stages. The calculator prints both. What matters more than the exact percentage is the niacin, which is covered in the food checker and in what to feed ducks: ducklings on chick starter without added niacin go lame within weeks.

eXtension’s figure for the whole growing period — 12.5 kg or 27.6 lb per duckling to twenty weeks — is the number to use when you are deciding whether to raise ducklings at all, and the duckling age planner shows week by week what else they need.

What changes the real figure

Range. A duck on good pasture with a pond full of invertebrates eats noticeably less bought feed in summer than the chart says, and Metzer’s breed chart rates foraging ability by breed — Muscovy and Runners “Excellent”, Pekin “Fair”. The calculator cannot see your grass. Treat its figure as the maximum you will buy.

Cold. Ducks eat more in winter to stay warm. Keeping ducks through winter covers the practical side; expect the feed bill to rise with the frost.

Lay. A duck in full lay eats more than the same duck resting, which is why Metzer’s chart separates the two. A flock that stops laying in autumn will eat less, and a flock under lights to keep laying will not.

Waste. Ducks carry feed to the water and drop it, and rats take what is left overnight. A feeder that is picked up at dusk and a trough that does not tip pay for themselves in a season.

Meat ducks

eXtension’s article on ducks raised for the table gives the whole picture in one line: Pekin ducklings are marketed at 6 to 7 lb, reached at seven to nine weeks, having consumed 20 to 25 lb of feed. That is a feed conversion of a little over three to one and it is the reason the Pekin is the commercial duck. Muscovy and mule ducks take longer to reach the same weight and need more feed; eXtension says so but gives no figure, and neither does this tool.

What this calculator will not do

It will not tell you what a bag of feed costs — you tell it. It will not give a figure for breeds Metzer does not chart separately; Cayuga, Rouen, Welsh Harlequin, Buff, Swedish and the rest are all in “all other breeds”, which is how Metzer publishes them. And it will not give a figure for geese, because none of these sources is about geese.

If the question behind this one is how many ducks to keep in the first place, the flock planner works from the eggs you want and the space you have; and the housing and space calculator turns the flock into square feet.