Bloated bread-fed ducks put on a diet

Shibden Hall, near Halifax, had been mainly popular for school visits before it featured in the BBC’s lesbian drama Secret Diaries of Miss Anne Lister last year.

This led to a huge increase in visitors and after wandering around the 600-year-old house the visitors frequently went to the lake to feed the wild ducks.

Lovers of the Grade II* Listed 15th century property were horrified as the 800 square metre water feature, created by Anne Lister herself in the 1830s, disappeared under a crust of bloated rotting bread carpeting the surface.

The lake is home to scores of mallards, moorhens, Canada geese, and swans – some of which became ill from eating mouldy bread crawling with bacteria. The birds also began to get overweight because of the increased starch intake and many were too slow to escape foxes as they nested in reeds at night.

The newly formed Friends of Shibden Estate decided the only solution was to appoint “Duck Food Monitors” and source an alternative food supply.

Research over the internet led them to bulk buy “floating discs”, a fishmeal-based product approved for ornamental birds by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, which contains oils necessary to maintain their plumage and all the vitamins they need for a balanced diet.

The new regime was introduced over the summer and the Friends say the birds are not only lapping up the healthier snack but already looking leaner, and fitter.

Duck Food Monitor Sue Smith said: “The mouldy bread was harming the ducks and poisoning the lake. It was like a big crust over the surface.

“The slices of bread swelled up when they got wet and joined up like a pie.”

Another Friend, Robert Trout, added: “It was just a scum of uneaten bread and bags tossed in by the kids.” Twenty pence buys a visitor a 65 gram serving in a bag which breaks down in the water rather than the polythene which was littering the surface.