Bread Is Bad For Birds

Duckling awaiting bread (photo by Jourdain Nicolas via Flickr, Creative Commons license)
Duckling screaming for bread (photo by Jourdain Nicolas via Flickr, Creative Commons license)

What do you do with a stale loaf of bread?  Do you feed it to the birds?  Uh oh!  Did you know that bread is bad for birds?

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not going to poison them. It’s just that for birds bread has no nutritional value.  They’ll fill up on it instead of the food that’s good for them.

Bread is junk food for birds.  So are crackers, chips, french fries, donuts, cereal and popcorn, to name a few.  These foods are especially bad for ducklings because their little bodies have special nutritional needs.

Since the birds won’t control their own junk food intake, you shouldn’t feed them bread.  This isn’t an edict from the Food Police.  It’s just common sense because …

If you’re the only person feeding the birds you can give them good food all the time (see list below) and feed bread sparingly as a junk food treat and it won’t cause trouble.

But at places where lots of people are feeding bread to birds, your bread adds to the problem.  Here’s an visual example.  Do you recognize the spillway at Pymantuning?

Tossing bread to fish, ducks and geese at Pymatuning Spillway area (photo by Brian Byrnes via Flickr, Creative Commons license)
Tossing bread to fish, ducks and geese at Pymatuning Spillway area (photo by Brian Byrnes via Flickr, Creative Commons license)

When you visit a park or waterway where other people feed the birds, bring good food for ducks and geese such as:

  • Cracked corn, barley, oats or other grains
  • Birdseed
  • Lettuce and cabbage (cut or torn)
  • Grapes (cut in half to prevent choking) and fruit (cut up)
  • Frozen peas or corn kernels (defrost them)
  • Duck feed pellets (from farm supply stores)
  • Worms, mealworms and night crawlers (fish bait)
  • And by the way, ducks love dry cat/dog food but the park won’t want you to bring it.

Read more about feeding bread to ducks, including the health problems it causes, at The Spruce: Is Feeding Ducks Bread Bad?

Yes, bread is bad for birds.

p.s. Click here for a list of what’s good to feed backyard birds.

(photos credits: duckling photo by Jourdain Nicolas via Flickr, Creative Commons license; Pymatuning photo by Brian Byrnes via Flickr, Creative Commons license)

10 thoughts on “Bread Is Bad For Birds

  1. Feeding waterfowl processed food high in carbohydrates and low in vitamins is believed to contribute to a malformation known as “angel wing.” Some birds are rendered completely unable to fly from this defect: https://www.thedodo.com/angel-wing-syndrome-geese-ducks-2343009351.html

    Has anyone seen birds afflicted with this? Thinking back, I probably have, but didn’t recognise the extent of their debilitation; when they’re walking or wading, it might just appear as though their feathers are “ruffled” or out of place.

  2. I actually have a printed flyer about this that I keep in my car. I bird Duck Hollow and when I see people feeding bread to the ducks, I hand them a flyer.
    I like to be proactive 🙂

  3. When I lived in Pittsburgh I walked to work daily. Almost every day I would pass a woman who put out bread for her birds to eat. One day I told her that the birds get no nutritional value from it and it essentially just fills them up. She didn’t believe me and kept it up anyway. Hopefully I saw the same birds at my feeder down the street.

  4. What do u feed the whooping cranes, crows, squirrels? They come to my front door I stop to giving white bread … they beautiful birds love them …

  5. You really didn’t say what to feed birds. You went right into saying what to feed geese and ducks. What should you feed birds?

    1. Warren Lockwood, it is difficult to change people’s minds about bread but you may be able to have someone from your local Audubon chapter give an educational presentation about birds that includes information on bird food. People are happy to learn from an expert.

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