Can Ducks Eat Rice?

Yes — cooked or uncooked, white or brown. The story that dry rice swells inside a bird and kills it is a myth that ornithologists have tested and dismissed, and rice is one of the few kitchen foods that wildlife bodies actually recommend for pond ducks. Two conditions: plain, and not much.

The short answer

The Canal & River Trust, the charity that looks after England and Wales’ canals, puts rice on its list of the six best things to feed ducks: “Ducks will appreciate a handful of leftover rice if you’ve cooked too much for your dinner. You can also use uncooked rice, both are fine.” PetMD’s veterinary guide to feeding ducks lists “cooked oats and rice” among the healthier alternatives to bread. No duck or poultry source we could find warns against rice. The only warnings attach to what people do to rice — salt it, spice it, or leave it out for two days.

The swelling myth

You have probably heard it: rice thrown at a wedding kills the birds that eat it, because it swells in their stomachs. The Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s answer is one word — “Nope!” — followed by the point that “A great many birds, from waterfowl to Bobolinks, feed on rice in nature. It is easily digestible.” Rice is a grass seed, and ducks eat grass seeds; wild waterfowl feed in rice fields wherever there are rice fields.

The claim was also tested rather than just argued. Snopes, which debunks the story, quotes Steven Sibley of the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology — “Rice is no threat to birds. It must be boiled before it will expand” — and describes a University of Kentucky experiment in which soaked white rice “expanded in volume by 33%” while ordinary bird seed “increased in size by an even greater percentage (40%)”, and “None of the avian crop models burst.” The same biologist, James Krupa, then “fed instant rice to 60 doves and pigeons, then monitored the birds for 12 hours — the birds were fine”, as Popular Science reports.

What is in rice for a duck

Per 100 grams, the US Department of Agriculture’s reference data give raw white long-grain rice 365 kcal, 7.1 g protein, 80 g carbohydrate and 1.3 g fibre, with almost no sugar and 11.6 g water. Cooked without salt, the same rice is 68 g water, 130 kcal and 2.7 g protein per 100 g — the grain has simply taken on water. Either way the picture is the same: rice is energy, mostly starch, with protein well below the 16 to 20 per cent of a complete duck feed. It is a filler, and a duck that fills up on it is not eating what it should. That is exactly the charge the New York Department of Environmental Conservation lays against bread, corn and popcorn — “low in protein and are very poor substitutes for natural foods” — and rice belongs in the same sentence.

How to feed rice to ducks

Cooked rice: plain, unsalted, unseasoned, and fresh. Rice that has stood at room temperature is a food-poisoning risk for any animal, so leftover rice for the ducks means today’s leftovers, not the weekend’s. Birds & Blooms puts the salt point plainly: “it’s best practice not to add any salt or other seasoning to the rice. Additives like salt can really harm birds.” Fried rice, pilau, risotto and anything with onion in it are not duck food — onion is on every avoid list.

Uncooked rice: scatter it thinly on the ground or on shallow water. It is an unground kernel, so a kept duck eating much of it needs grit to grind it — Metzer Farms: “if they are fed whole corn, milo, wheat or other whole grains, grit is needed.” Pond ducks pick up their own grit.

Quantity: the Canal & River Trust says “a handful”, and that is for a whole pond’s worth of ducks on “a rare occasion”. For a kept flock the poultry extension rule applies — treats of all kinds under a tenth of the diet; Colorado State University Extension: “Treats should make up no more than 10% of their daily diet.” A spoonful each, not a bowl.

When rice is a problem

Salted or seasoned rice, for the salt. Old cooked rice, for the bacteria. Rice as a staple, for the missing protein — a duck fed on rice and bread is living on what the New York DEC calls “very poor substitutes for natural foods”. Rice pudding, rice with milk and sweetened rice cereals bring in dairy and sugar. Mouldy rice is the serious one: ducks are unusually sensitive to mould toxins, so a damp bag that smells wrong is not for the birds.

At the pond

Rice is one of the better things to carry to the park — the Canal & River Trust ranks it with sweetcorn, lettuce, peas, oats and seeds — and it is a straight upgrade on bread, for the reasons in can ducks eat bread. Bring a small bag, scatter it where the ducks are already dabbling, and stop when the first birds lose interest. Other grain-type treats are covered in can ducks eat corn. The full list of what we have checked is in the can-ducks-eat checker, and the diet these treats sit on top of is in what do ducks eat.