A new climate-friendly, solar-powered duck food dispenser has been unveiled this week at Apex Park in Highbridge.
Sedgemoor District Council is working with The Feed Ducks Initiative to provide a solar powered duck food dispenser which is made from recycled plastics – the equivalent of 20,000 plastic bottles.
Apex Park is the first in the UK to have a contactless solar powered feeder model – and it’s probably a world first!
“The duck feed dispensers are contactless and for a small fee dispenses healthy duck food for the visitors to Apex Park to use when feeding their local ducks,” Claire Faun told Burnham-On-Sea.com.
“A portion of the proceeds are donated back to the Friends of Apex Park to help develop biodiversity and environmental programs at their local Park; the other proceeds are for the duck food itself.”
“With many people and children walking out and about, in parks, by the canal or river, it’s always lovely to see children feeding the ducks, usually with stale bread.”
“However, ducks need a varied diet to be healthy and bread doesn’t hold much nutritional value for ducks.”
“It fills the duck’s stomach so that they don’t forage for food that they would normally eat, which can lead to malnutrition. Uneaten soggy bread can cause a build-up of bad nutrients, which can lead to more algae growing around the water.”
“This, in turn, can attracts pest such as rats and can be harmful to dogs that drink from the lake.”
“If you don’t want to use the feeder, we know that ducks to love the following foods: Sweetcorn – Frozen or Fresh; Lettuce – Rocket, kale and Iceburg; Peas – Frozen or Fresh; Oats – Flapjack, rolled oats or instant porridge; Seeds – Bird seeds or human seeds and nuts; and Rice – Cooked or uncooked.”
The Feed Ducks Initiative at www.feedducks.com is an environmental initiative aimed at reducing the amount of bread and other food which is not good for the ducks digestion, which is fed to them by visitors to the park.
