Holding Mallard on a River

Muddy90

Anyone have experience of feeding wild Mallard on a relatively fast flowing river? We have a few on there at the moment but I'd like to start feeding to hold them and encourage a few more in. I used to help manage some flighting ponds and we'd feed the margins about three times a week without leaving feed on the bank to avoid rats. I'm assuming Mallard will feed in the slack water of the river margins, but has anyone else done this?

garyc007

Not on a river but imagine it would work some ways the same as holding them on a pond, if the part of the river is suitable and will hold a bit of feed

Muddy90

Just as a follow up for anyone who may be interested I fed a slack part of the river a small amount of mixed corn every 3 days or so in November and December last year and it seemed to hold the existing wild Mallard but didn't encourage any extra in.

mallards

I have a similar opportunity now, except there's an overgrown feeder stream which goes into a small upland river, which then runs into a large lough about six or seven km away. I'm hoping to clear the feeder stream where it runs into the river as the stream is quite wide and the water is slack there. Maybe set an auto feeder up with the hope it starts pulling extra duck in each evening to establish a flight line between there and the lake. It works for me elsewhere but thats between small flight ponds and larger loughs.

Birdnuts

Mallard are the most adaptable of our duck species - but a fast flowing river is still "sub optimal" in terms of holding large numbers compared to other types of preferred wetlands like slow muddy rivers, ponds, reedswamp etc.