drying breaking and loss of muscovy feathers

[batha]

Some of my ducks have started to look a bit ugly as their feathers have lost their sheen and are breaking. Is yhis normal? The thing is that half the ducks are fine looking but the older ones are losing their looks. These also dont want to get in the pond and run away in the rare occasions we have rain. Theyre all eating a very varied diet of grain, veg and plants and nine seem unhealthy other than this. Is there anything I can do?

 

[learycow]

Sounds like they are getting ready to molt! Their feathers will get dull and start to look terrible. They will start to shed the feathers and grow new ones. The wings are always last to fall out and last to grow back in.
The molting from start to finish can take 3-4 months or longer depending on the duck

 

[batha]

Ahhhhhh fantastic, what a relief! Actually we just started to see new neck feathers on duckface, so we suspected this....such a relief as about 5 of our ducks do indeed look quite terrible right now and I worried that we were feeding them wrongly or something but couldnt think why!
Thank you!!!