Feeding flight ponds

The following points are important:

Feed as late as possible - about half an hour before the first ducks appear -and do not grossly overfeed. Apart from providing a longer feeding period for unwanted scavengers, too much food can encourage ducks to stay late in the morning and flight late in the evening. In extreme cases they will stay all day without lighting at all! The quality of food put down can only be judged by experience. As a guide, the contents of a 2-gallon bucket ( 11-12 lb) should be sufficient for 70/80 ducks, but this would be where the food is resting on a hard bottom, such as gravel. In a marshy area where the ducks are likely to lose some of the grain as they dibble down into soft mud, the quantity would have to be increased. If the correct amount of food is put down - varied according to the number coming in - it should be cleared up by morning. Any substantial amount left over will be a warning that the ducks have been disturbed during the night.

Ducks will eat almost anything, but barley is probably their favourite food in this country. In warmer countries, maize is often their first choice. Our native ducks also enjoy this grain, but it sometimes takes them a day or two to get used to it. In fact any grain or mixture of grains makes a good food: split peas and beans attract them, also 'condemned' sultanas, raisins and bananas when obtainable. (Dock strikes can be a source of supplies.) We have also used sub-standard hound-meal with success.

Waste products from brewers can sometimes be obtained at a reasonable price and are much favoured by ducks. These include the 'coombs' or small broken barley, the 'culms' which are the sprouts after the barley has germinated and finally 'brewers' grains', left after the barley has been used in the brewing process. The last type is often used as cattle food, and can be more expensive than feeding barley. It can be profitable to shop around for bargains. Mouldy foods should be avoided.

Potatoes can be good value, especially when frosted and mushy. In this condition they produce 'worms' and other animal food. If they are split, pulped or mashed and mixed with seed or barley they are particularly attractive. If a large quantity of potatoes - up to several tons - are dumped in a pond, wildfowl will busy themselves excavating the soft material at the base of the pile. This will create small 'caves' and not infrequently these caves collapse, trapping the ducks' heads below water. To avoid this, fence in the potato pile with sheep or pig netting. This forces the ducks to make smaller excavations which, should they collapse, usually cause no harm to the birds. Beech mast and acorns are a great draw in the wild, and in good seeding years we have taken advantage of these free supplies.

Although rabbit paunches and dead sheep are often advocated, we do not recommend them. Unthreshed wheat and barley, floating on the water or tied head-down to upright poles - though a fiddly procedure it can be a great attraction and will keep ducks busy.

By far the most productive flight pond known to us is sited in the Midlands. It consists of a carefully fed gravel pit, of 4 acre surrounded by an 1 1-acre field. The owner of the pond rents this field and puts most of it into barley every year, harvesting some for feeding and leaving the remainder as attractive natural food.

The food should be scattered mainly in the shallows, with only a small amount on the ground near the water's edge. It is often helpful to have some purpose-made gravely shallows where the food can be scattered.

Food should be distributed over as wide an area as possible, and not dumped in heaps. Care must be taken to avoid feeding in places where damage to dams, drains, paths or valuable trees is likely to be caused by foraging ducks. Mallard can be fed very satisfactorily on rafts (about 10 ft. X 3 ft.). These should be moored to stakes well away from the banks. A running loop of rope should be used through a pulley (sailors will know it as an 'endless whip') and attached to the raft which can then be hauled to the bank. The food can then be put in the raft before it is hauled back to the stake. Although weed and grass seeds, grain mixed with straw, and other such refuse is useful, it will sometimes float too thickly on the surface and prevent the mallard from foraging underneath and getting the grain. These floating rafts of vegetable matter should be raked away from the feeding points.

During hard frosts, straw bales can be divided into 'slices' and fitted together to form a carpet on the ice - the grain being spread on top. Old sacks, chaff, shavings, etc., can also be used. Sheaves of unthreshed corn are still sometimes available in the north and will provide food that can always be utilised in frosty conditions. If the grain is thrown directly onto the ice it can become frozen in, particularly after a fine day when the surface may thaw slightly until the frost refreeze it at dusk. In really wintry weather quite thick ice can form during the day; this must be broken up and some areas raked clear, or it will soon freeze together again. The raking may have to be delayed until the last possible moment, even at the risk of being caught in the act by the first flighting duck.

If a flight pond is also being used as a trout fishery, then feeding hygiene is all the more important. Feed only 'clean' foods such as barley and not 'dirty' foods such as badly frosted potatoes, as these can cause pollution. Do not allow stale food to lie in the water by overfeeding.

Flight ponds are often sited in fairly remote areas and regular daily feeding can be a problem to the gamekeeper with other duties, or the amateur who can only visit the pond at weekends. The Parson's Automatic Feeder provides a very effective answer. It is run by a car battery which normally gives a life of two months or more before it needs recharging. A time clock, wound up every 14 days, determines the time at which the machine operates and the duration -which in turn controls the amount of food that is delivered. Food is scattered over quite a large area - up to 30-40 ft. from the machine. Where the machine is placed on the edge of the water a special sleeve can be fitted to confine the feeding arc to 180 degrees. On some pond sites the normal 360 degree arc can be used to feed pheasants on the bank as well. An automatic feeder will always give far better results than occasional visits to the pond with large quantities of food.

Most flight pond owners content themselves with feeding only during the shooting season. While this is understandable, it will never give the best results. Starting with a little bait-feeding as early as June and continuing as required until the following April, is the best advice we can give. Some duck fed in February and March after the shooting is over will always return the following year, with their friends, and may stay to breed.

Later in this section we mention the desirability of controlling rats, and crows, which can steal a great deal of food.

Call duck (though not the much-publicised white ones), tame mallard, or mallard hybrids can be useful in bringing in wild duck: they can eat large quantities of the food intended for the incoming wild ones. Apart from being expensive to feed, these resident ducks are sometimes aggressive to wild duck flighting in and are usually too fat from over-feeding to fly. Six or seven resident duck are quite enough on a small two-gun pond and can be augmented with artificial decoys.

Duck calls in skilled hands are also very effective - either blown, or hand-operated like the American 'Scotch' Duck Call. Mallard are chatty, sociable creatures and do not mind sharing a meal with friends. Of inexperienced duck callers an American friend once said, "It's better to keep your duck call in your pocket and appear an amateur, than to blow it and remove any possible doubt."

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