If you’ve ever looked up anything to do with ducks and ice then you likely know that these birds enjoy ice water, ducks far and wide enjoy this icy liquid but why is this?
This article explores why ducks like ice water
Why do ducks like ice water?
Many humans enjoy eating ice, and many humans enjoy drinking icy cold water from out of the fridge, ducks also enjoy the refreshing taste of ice water, or even ice cubes.
If you prepare some ice cubes, or ice water, for your birds they will likely go crazy for it.
Ducks enjoy eating in general and some of the things that your duck likes to eat include crunchy foods, crunchy foods that your bird may enjoy eating include lettuce, sweetcorn, mealworms, and frozen peas.
These birds also enjoy drinking water, your duck can easily drink a gallon of water a day
If you can combine water and crunchiness into one food you’ll get ice water. The birds will gobble up the ice water whenever given.
Why do ducks swim in cold water?
Ducks can and do swim in cold water because they can. Ducks have to swim, they need water to maintain good health. Ducks not only like water, but they also need water.
These birds need water to drink, they need water to swim in, and, they need water to clean themselves with.
Without water ducks will become anxious, will become stressed, and will start to exhibit destructive behavior, the birds can even die without water.
The water that ducks use doesn’t have to be room temperature, it can be ice cold as well.
Ducks usually swim with their bodies above the water and their feet in the water.
In many animals, blood is kept at a warm temperature throughout the animal’s body, but this isn’t the case for ducks.
The blood in the bird’s body is kept warm but it changes to a cooler temperature once it reaches the bird’s feet.
Thanks to this phenomenon, the bird’s blood does not lose much heat when it reaches the bird’s feet and is exposed to cold water and cold temperatures.
This blood will travel back up into the bird’s body and will pick up heat in the process. The blood will arrive into the bird’s body warm and thus not cool the body down.
This is a very carefully regulated system that keeps the bird’s body warm but keeps the bird’s feet cold.
Studies have shown that when there is a loss of heat through the bird’s feet the loss of heat will only be about 5 percent of the bird’s body temperature.
The feet are kept healthy because they always have an adequate amount of blood flow because of this heat exchange system.
If you enjoyed this article then you may also be interested in other duck related articles. Here are some articles that you may be interested in: Duckling Vomiting, Duck Manure Vs Chicken Manure, Do Geese Get Cold, Why Is My Duck Throwing Up Water?, Does Duck Poop Kill Grass?, Duck Eggs Turning Black, How To Keep Ducks Quiet At Night