I have a single female African goose with my flock of ducks. She occasionally tries to mate my ducks (her on top), in the pool. Not good.
She also has a tremendous fit when my ducks mate each other. She acts like the sex police and puts up a fuss at them, sometimes biting them in the face...
I had a small duck killed and the gizzard was ripped out and thrown aside just like that. Also happened middle of the night. It was an owl. Caught it attacking again the next night. The remains were a mangled mess, left behind, but the area was loosely covered by netting so the owl couldn't have...
Whew ok, I have to admit, they're stumping me a little more than I anticipated. 😅 It's so much easier to tell when you see them all together. Lol It's one of those things where the longer you look at them individually, the more you question yourself. 🤣
My best guess would be:
Pic 1: Maybe boy...
Try to get good pictures of them all (the younger ones too) and I'll try my best to tell you their genders. It's often said you can tell by 4 weeks old, but it's easier for those with a trained eye. I've had practice with my 156 muscovy ducklings I hatched out this year so I'm starting to be...
The photo with 2 of them- the bottom one is definitely male. I'm leaning toward all being male just based on the wings but it's hard to tell. Would be easier to tell gender if you had full body shots with feet showing.
Yea, if you had both males and females, it would be instantly obvious at that age which is which. It definitely sucks when you end up with one gender and you're trying to compare and they all look the same. Lol
If you go for the smaller ones, you're much more likely to get females (depending...
Definitely males. The feet alone will give it away. Both the size and the stance (females feet are turned slightly inward and often step on their feet). The body length, the overall look...
Males will go from baby chirps to a "hoarse" sounding whisper (like they're still trying to "chirp") to...
Results after cooking!
I roasted him up, tiny feathers and all (with some roasty-toasty potatoes in duck fat). Cut the tail off after gutting because he sat too long from plucking and the end of the intestinal tract caused a bit of smell on the tail meat (but the rest was fine).
As much as...
Yaaasss! This is exactly my thinking. Lol I'd rather be able to see what I'm working with.
Thank you to everyone else for your input! Very much appreciated.
I wouldn't even mind too much to go through the wings and pluck out all the feather bits with tweezers but it's pointless because only...
Already tried it with a torch on this one. Lol Didn't work. Just shrunk the skin and would have cooked it before doing anything to those tiny hair feathers.
Yea, I'm thinking that's what I'll have to do. lol Might be harder though since ducks are much more densely feathered than chickens but I'm gonna try! 🤣
Thank you guys!
Ugh, what a bummer. I was going to say "I'm guessing this is why meat birds are white..?" 😅 But one of the other ducks I did was mostly black and had nothing of this sort at all.
So is it specifically because I missed the window to butcher? Do I have to wait til 16 weeks or...
So.. I've butchered a few ducks lately. 1 Pekin and 1 black swedish mix or something. Didn't have this problem with them. They were both 19 weeks (or 18 weeks and some change). Yea, I meant to butcher much sooner but time got away from me.
Now I decided to do one of my muscovies. I've done...
With such a large pip hole but no real zipping yet, I'd be concerned that it can't turn to zip and is stuck. I just had to rescue one of mine that was like this the other day. It was beyond ready to hatch but couldn't. Definitely chip away some shell from where the hole is. If the membrane is...