Duck duck questions on hatching

i think my answer to your question might be a little late, sorry! i have 5 laddies but right now im only getting 4 eggs, im actually curious about my 5th one, her voice is much deeper and she is much larger. she is a year old. i had a few females or at least i thought they were females last year that were at least 6 months old when their tails started to curl but i didnt think it would take a year... is this normal? could my bird be a boy lol

Cowgirlmelo said:

i think my answer to your question might be a little late, sorry! i have 5 laddies but right now im only getting 4 eggs, im actually curious about my 5th one, her voice is much deeper and she is much larger. she is a year old. i had a few females or at least i thought they were females last year that were at least 6 months old when their tails started to curl but i didnt think it would take a year... is this normal? could my bird be a boy lol

Click to expand...

What breed are your ducks? Even if they are all the same breed, some ducks are just bigger than others so you can't really go on size alone. Does your big one now have a drake feather? Does he/she quack like your other females? Males are much quieter and have a whispery/raspy voice. Very different from females.

Drake feathers normally show up by 6 months old, so it would be odd for it to take a year, yes. That said, I have a 1.5 year old female Cayuga who has developed a drake feather. Sometimes this happens if there are no drakes present, but when hers first appeared I still had a drake. Go figure! I know she is 100% a female because she laid eggs last year (she was separated in her own pen that year due to an aggressive male I had), plus she has a female voice.

Anyway, you could just have one female who hasn't started laying for the season yet. Can you possibly post a video of the duck in question "talking" so we can hear his/her voice?

[QUOTE="Orca5094, post: 16809884, member: 0"]
Aww, thanks! I stole the infertile pic from Google, though. It's a chicken egg (which is why the yolk is paler than my duck egg), but checking for fertility works the same with both. ;)


I used to be an Avian Keeper at a zoo, in charge of all the waterfowl care, egg incubation, hand-rearing, etc. Now I just have my own little flock at home for fun. ^-^ 

You're welcome! Glad I could help. 
[/QUOTE]

That sounds like a brilliant job to have ^_^
So I've included a photo from one of my ducks from last week...this would class as infertile yes?

I feel like her voice is just deeper, she is just as loud as the others. I also have no idea other then the tail flip what drake feathers constitutes as, i know their color changes a lot but she still looks like a female. 8i have 3 campbells and 2 rouens. last year before we left we had 2 drake rouens and 2 additional females along with a campbell drake with the other 5 girls but 3 fell prey to a skunk and the other 2 males were butchered for holidays. I know for sure that one rouen is laying because their eggs are much larger them campbells but i couldnt tell you which one. ill try and get a video uploaded. Do you know if having been bred by peking could change the color of their shells? My rouens have always have green eggs and they are all a perfect cream color now. thank you so much for your help

My muscovy hatched 7 ducklings with a pekin dad. She is under wood rack. Should I move her and ducklings to a secure pen for a week or so?

Gge23 said:

Click to expand...

Cowgirlmelo said:

I feel like her voice is just deeper, she is just as loud as the others. I also have no idea other then the tail flip what drake feathers constitutes as, i know their color changes a lot but she still looks like a female. 8i have 3 campbells and 2 rouens. last year before we left we had 2 drake rouens and 2 additional females along with a campbell drake with the other 5 girls but 3 fell prey to a skunk and the other 2 males were butchered for holidays. I know for sure that one rouen is laying because their eggs are much larger them campbells but i couldnt tell you which one. ill try and get a video uploaded. Do you know if having been bred by peking could change the color of their shells? My rouens have always have green eggs and they are all a perfect cream color now. thank you so much for your help

Click to expand...

I think she just has a deeper voice, but is still a girl. A drake feather is very obvious as it curls upwards. Here's a pic of my old drake that shows off his curly drake feathers above the tail:



As far as the egg shell color, that is dependent on the female duck and not the drake. So I don't think breeding them with a Pekin would change the color, but duck eggs do typically vary and aren't always the same color all the time. They can be greenish, cream, white, gray, etc.

terri2098 said:

My muscovy hatched 7 ducklings with a pekin dad. She is under wood rack. Should I move her and ducklings to a secure pen for a week or so?

Click to expand...

Yes, I would put them in a nice safe place (separated from the drake as well, unless he is being very gentle with them). Drakes will often kill ducklings, so it's better to be safe than sorry. They can all be reintroduced to pappa duck when they are the same size as the adults, usually around 4 weeks or so. Also, ducklings are of course more vulnerable to predators, so make sure they are super secure! Congrats on your new little ones!

Yeh I've cracked a couple more open since that one and they're the same. Shall keep trying!

@Cowgirlmelo I need a bit of advice again I'm afraid. I know this isn't what this forum was originally started for, but my two drakes have started fighting over my two girls. Now it's not violent or anything, basically when one of them tries to mate with one of the girls, the other one shoos it off and they peck at each other a bit and then it's over. Now I know this is probably why I am struggling to get any fertilised eggs, and that I really should be getting rid of one of them, my issue is that I don't want to separate them as they are brothers and I've brought them up from ducklings, so as you can imagine I am rather attached. Maybe it is a romanticised view that the it's love each other and I can't bare to separate them because of that, but I really want to get some ducklings, and they do also attack my chickens when they get out of their pen. Should I be getting rid of one or both of them? I just don't want them to lose their heads if I sell them

Well despite the tail curl, my rouen female is starting to act more like a male. more confronting when i am around and her legs are getting hairy which was a sign of one of my birds from 2 years ago, after 8 months of no tail curl finnaly turned into a male. she also is going green on her head and the streak behind her eye is more defined. this is weird to me but i really believe it might be a male after all this time.