Thread: Mai mai prep and feeding

I went for a evening shoot on my pond last year and set the feeder of manually to put out stone extra grain. Over the next half hour I watched sparrows eat every single grain of the barley that was floating on top of the water. I am going back to peas next year. Also concerning the rats if you use a automatic feeder to feed a small amount into the shallow water you probably won't have a rat problem. If you hand feed heaps onto the dry land you will get rats no question. You should aim to feed just what the ducks can eat each day so that piss of and then come back the next day for the next feed. Fat ducks just sit there and then piss
off on opening morning when you disturb then seeing up and never come back.

Originally Posted by MassiveAttack

I went for a evening shoot on my pond last year and set the feeder of manually to put out stone extra grain. Over the next half hour I watched sparrows eat every single grain of the barley that was floating on top of the water. I am going back to peas next year. Also concerning the rats if you use a automatic feeder to feed a small amount into the shallow water you probably won't have a rat problem. If you hand feed heaps onto the dry land you will get rats no question. You should aim to feed just what the ducks can eat each day so that piss of and then come back the next day for the next feed. Fat ducks just sit there and then piss
off on opening morning when you disturb then seeing up and never come back.

Yeah that's what we do. Feed just enough to keep the mallards competing for food. 5 seconds in the mornings. Ramped up over the last month before opening. All feed over water. Once opening has been we generally put the feeder back to one small morning burst. Once it empties it's not refilled. I stay away from peas as they just jam up my feeder. Barley and wheat serve us well. It works for us and the proofs in the pudding. Dead ducks. Hundreds of