As a duck owner, you want to keep your ducks as healthy and happy as possible. You know that spinach is good for humans, so it might get you wondering—can ducks eat spinach?
Yes, ducks can eat spinach. In fact, ducks love spinach.
The problem is that spinach doesn’t always love ducks. Or, at least, it doesn’t love their eggs.
Read on to learn about when and how you can incorporate spinach in your duck’s diet and the impact it’ll have on their eggs if you feed them too much of it.
Benefits of Spinach
Just like humans, spinach offers several benefits to ducks. Spinach is a high source of the following nutrients:
- Calcium
- Carotenoids
- Vitamin C and K
- Folic Acid
- Iron
Risks of Ducks Eating Spinach
Ironically, spinach is high in calcium, but it’s also high in oxalic acid—a compound that actually prevents a duck’s body from being able to absorb calcium.
The phenomenon of reduced calcium absorption as a result of oxalic acid isn’t unique to ducks. In fact, scientists have been studying oxalic acid for years in humans.
The reason that oxalic acid inhibits calcium absorption is that it binds calcium molecules together, making the duck’s body unable to process them.
If you haven’t already painted the picture of just how big of an issue a lack of calcium absorption is for ducks, let us help you—eggs contain high levels of calcium. Or, at least, they need to contain lots of calcium to serve their purpose.
Without enough calcium in a female duck’s system, you’ll notice her eggs having the following issues:
- Soft shells
- Eggs break easily
- Eggs get stuck inside her, causing a situation called egg binding
Furthermore, a female duck’s body requires calcium to create contractions. Therefore, if she doesn’t have enough calcium in her system, she won’t be able to push her eggs through her oviduct.
What Parts of the Spinach Plant Can Ducks Eat?
The calcium in spinach occurs in both the leaves and stems. So, if you choose to feed your spinach to your ducks, it doesn’t matter what part of the plant you give them.
It’s also okay to give your ducks whole or chopped spinach—they’ll be able to swallow it in either form.
Nevertheless, we recommend giving your ducks spinach in a bowl of water, and we’ll cover why shortly.
Can Baby Ducks Eat Spinach?
Like adult ducks, baby ducks can eat spinach in moderation. However, you should chop up the spinach into small pieces. Alternatively, you can boil and cool it so that it doesn’t become a choking hazard.
How to Prepare Spinach for Ducks
Did you know that salad dressing on spinach for humans serves more than a way to give it a delicious flavor? Salad dressing with vinegar helps to increase the acids in the stomach. In turn, that helps the body absorb more calcium and other nutrients.
Apple cider vinegar, in particular, is effective in boosting stomach acids, and it just so happens that it has the same effect on a duck’s stomach as it does in humans.
Therefore, when you want to feed your ducks some spinach, it’s best practice to pour a small amount of apple cider vinegar into a large bowl and let the spinach float around on top.
That way, you’re creating a duck-friendly salad dressing that will encourage your duck’s bodies to retain more calcium.
As if it couldn’t get better, your ducks will receive many benefits by consuming apple cider vinegar. They include:
- Boosting their immune system
- Kills bacteria, including E. coli
- Lowers cholesterol and triglyceride levels
Long story short, even if you don’t give spinach to your ducks regularly (which we recommend), it’s not a bad idea to keep a small amount of apple cider vinegar in their water bowl.
How Often to Feed Spinach to Your Ducks
There’s no strict guideline on how often you should feed spinach to your ducks, but our recommendation is to use it as an occasional treat and always in conjunction with apple cider vinegar.
It’s undeniable that spinach contains a lot more nutrients than many other leafy vegetables your duck may consume.
Therefore, you can absolutely incorporate spinach as part of your duck’s healthy diet. Just make sure to monitor your female duck’s eggs closely.
If you notice they start becoming soft, or if she seems like she’s having trouble pushing out the eggs, it’s time to cut back on the amount and frequency with which you feed her spinach.
Using Iceberg Lettuce as a Substitute
After you feed your ducks spinach—food that they’ll absolutely adore—it can be difficult to walk past their pen and see the looks on their faces begging you to bring them more.
So, naturally, your instinct might be to feed them iceberg lettuce as a placeholder. After all, nutritionists always talk about how few nutrients iceberg lettuce has, right?
Well, yes. However, if your ducks consume a lot of iceberg lettuce, it can give them diarrhea.
What can we say? The nutritionists are right about it containing tons of water and next to no nutrients.
Long story short, eating in moderation is the same for ducks as humans; overfeeding your ducks too much of anything will likely cause them to suffer negative health side effects.
Wrap Up—Can Ducks Eat Spinach?
Ducks can eat spinach, and they’ll be thrilled when you feed it to them, but you shouldn’t make it a regular practice. Although spinach is an excellent source of nutrients in ducks, its high oxalic acid concentration reduces how much calcium a duck can absorb.
Without high calcium levels in their system, it’ll be difficult for females to push eggs out of their bodies, and the eggs themselves will have soft shells.
If you choose to feed spinach to your ducks as an occasional treat, we recommend putting it in water and mixing it in a little apple cider vinegar. That way, the vinegar will help your ducks absorb the calcium.