Ducks are omnivorous, they eat plant material such as grasses, seeds, roots, and tubers, as well as animals, such as insects and other invertebrates.

So Yes, Ducks eat grasshoppers, they will gladly enjoy the big snack and get rid of any potential invasion of your yard by any type of grasshopper, locust, or crickets.

Table of Contents

What Are Grasshoppers?

Grasshoppers are insects of the suborder Caelifera in the order Orthoptera, which is also known as the “grasshopper order”.

Grasshoppers are usually herbivorous. They can be found in many places globally and account for some 25 percent of all insect species. They can live both in temperate and tropical climates, depending on the species.

A grasshopper has a long segmented body, from which it gets its name, and six legs on its thorax. The head is just a little bit bigger than its thorax, with small eyes and a pair of long antennae.

The adult grasshopper has wings; these are short and leathery and lie flat over the abdomen when not in use for flight. When they are at rest or when they sense danger they will raise their wings to protect themselves like a shield.

Health Benefits

By adding them into their diet, ducks will add a good and complete source of protein, vitamins, and minerals. Grasshoppers are great for breading as well.

They are low in fat, high in protein, and contain a large number of B vitamins, including thiamine and vitamin B12, which are extremely important for happy and healthy ducks.

For example, you can keep grasshoppers with your ducklings in a tub or a pond to provide them with extra food sources when they are too young to eat real crops.

Can Ducks Eat Crickets?

As stated before, ducks are used to eating crickets whenever they find them.

Ducks find their food by sight and they don’t discriminate much between food that has been living or dead. You can try to feed them crickets when they are hiding under rocks or shrubs or something similar.

If you hit the bush with anything that makes a loud noise, such as a stick, the crickets will come out running away from the bush and your ducks will see them; provided that you have ducks in your backyard, of course!

You can then start watching for those particular bushes and hit them whenever you spot a cricket trying to run away from it. Some people have managed to teach their ducks to eat crickets after about a week of doing this every day.

Once your duck is familiar with eating crickets you can place crickets in the water. Ducks will eat them as they float down to the bottom without having to chase them. I recommend that you only feed your ducks crickets or other insects, once a week or less.

Ducks will eat all types of crickets, but they seem to like eating field crickets best.

What Other Insect Ducks Eat?

Ducks will eat pretty much any kind of insect that will come near their beaks, some of them are:

Dragonflies
Crickets

Cicadas
Ants
Butterflies and moths

Spiders
Flies (including house flies) and bee flies (which are bees in a fly’s body) In fact, the only insects that ducks don’t seem to like eating are: Ants
June Bugs

Japanese Beetles

The main danger that can come to ducks and birds in general that normally eat insects is to contract some parasites (ringworm, roundworm), so if you notice a stomach or a digestive problem it can be caused by this.

What Ducks Shouldn’t Eat?

It’s important to remember what it’s better to keep away from your ducks:

-Bones -Milk -Salt (can cause diarrhea) -Potatoes -Eggs, especially the white ones-Citrus Fruits-Fresh meat

Even though they can eat most of these things, they are not good for them to eat and can cause a lot of problems including:

-Blood poisoning and blindness -Internal parasites and worms -Liver damage -Stomach irritation -Plague and unpalatable food poisoning -and even death.

What Ducks Shouldn’t Eat in Large Quantities?

When you feed ducks table scraps, make sure that you only feed them small quantities, in fact feeding them too many foods can cause problems. Plus, they are not generally very good at digesting more than one thing at a time. Also, make sure that whatever you feed them is unsalted or any kind of salt is not added. Salt in their diet can make them ill.