3 week old ducklings introduced to adult flock, drake tried to "breed" with them

[NewJourney]

So, here's my dilemma. It's kind of a long story so please bear with me. We bought 2 ducklings from TSC and the same day bought 4 chicks from a local non-chain farm store. They've been raised together and do great together. We then hatched out (via incubator) 9 baby chickens that we are brooding separately. We fell in love with the colors and personality of the one duckling (which I believe to be magpie) so we ordered 6 from the local farm store. We picked them up recently, too. We are brooding those separately.

Finally we got the brooder house set up (outside next to our adult coop) and tried to put the original ducklings/chicks combo with the new 6 ducklings which are about 3 weeks younger. So, they are just a tad smaller than the chicks are but significantly smaller than the original two ducklings. The two older ducklings bullied the baby ducklings immediately when we put them together, so we immediately took the two older ducklings and put them into the adult coop (that has a drake), well I then saw the drake try to breed with one of the 3 week old ducklings (the runner/campbell if you've seen my other recent thread) and I immediately ran over and grabbed the drake off of the duckling and we secured him in a dog crate overnight because we have no other option because we have dogs. He did NOT penetrate the duckling thankfully. I pulled him off in time.

My question is: Is it normal for a drake to try to breed with a young duckling of about 3 weeks old??? If so, is it only females or will he try to breed with any duck/duckling? I ask simply to know if there is a way to tell IF the duckling is male/female by this incident.

We are taking the drake to another local farm store that will adopt him out to someone else. Since we are raising ducklings we know at least one will be a drake, so we are okay with not having one for 5-6 mos.

Also, the drake drowned one of my KC hens very recently, so, bye bye.

 

[Yardmom]

It is more likely a show of dominance than an attempt to breed. It would not be a reliable indicator of gender.

 

[Jenbirdee]

how old is the drake and are you sure it’s a drake?
The bottom line is whenever you introduce new animals into your flock the first need time of look but no touch - through a fence. They can be next to each other where they can see each other, but not touch each other for a few weeks until they get used to each other also never let a drake breed with female ducks until they are of egg laying age, so you would have to keep them separate a lot longer anyway,, so it’s good you’re re homing him. .
here’s a fun fact – the mallard Drake is the number one most sexually aggressive animal in the entire animal kingdom.
All our domestic ducks breeds started from mallards, except for Muskovy ducks.
The recommended ratio for drakes to hens is one to five.
Also, if a drake mates with a chicken hen of any age, she can be injured, and even die, because the anatomy doesn’t match up. Drakes have equipment that roosters do not possess.
I’m so glad you were there to rescue your little ducks , yay!

 

[Chicken_tiger_catt]

So, here's my dilemma. It's kind of a long story so please bear with me. We bought 2 ducklings from TSC and the same day bought 4 chicks from a local non-chain farm store. They've been raised together and do great together. We then hatched out (via incubator) 9 baby chickens that we are brooding separately. We fell in love with the colors and personality of the one duckling (which I believe to be magpie) so we ordered 6 from the local farm store. We picked them up recently, too. We are brooding those separately.

Finally we got the brooder house set up (outside next to our adult coop) and tried to put the original ducklings/chicks combo with the new 6 ducklings which are about 3 weeks younger. So, they are just a tad smaller than the chicks are but significantly smaller than the original two ducklings. The two older ducklings bullied the baby ducklings immediately when we put them together, so we immediately took the two older ducklings and put them into the adult coop (that has a drake), well I then saw the drake try to breed with one of the 3 week old ducklings (the runner/campbell if you've seen my other recent thread) and I immediately ran over and grabbed the drake off of the duckling and we secured him in a dog crate overnight because we have no other option because we have dogs. He did NOT penetrate the duckling thankfully. I pulled him off in time.

My question is: Is it normal for a drake to try to breed with a young duckling of about 3 weeks old??? If so, is it only females or will he try to breed with any duck/duckling? I ask simply to know if there is a way to tell IF the duckling is male/female by this incident.

We are taking the drake to another local farm store that will adopt him out to someone else. Since we are raising ducklings we know at least one will be a drake, so we are okay with not having one for 5-6 mos.

Also, the drake drowned one of my KC hens very recently, so, bye bye.

get rid of him. get a rooster instead. ducks are just like that, and it's a wonder they survive in the wild.

 

[NewJourney]

how old is the drake and are you sure it’s a drake?
The bottom line is whenever you introduce new animals into your flock the first need time of look but no touch - through a fence. They can be next to each other where they can see each other, but not touch each other for a few weeks until they get used to each other also never let a drake breed with female ducks until they are of egg laying age, so you would have to keep them separate a lot longer anyway,, so it’s good you’re re homing him. .
here’s a fun fact – the mallard Drake is the number one most sexually aggressive animal in the entire animal kingdom.
All our domestic ducks breeds started from mallards, except for Muskovy ducks.
The recommended ratio for drakes to hens is one to five.
Also, if a drake mates with a chicken hen of any age, she can be injured, and even die, because the anatomy doesn’t match up. Drakes have equipment that roosters do not possess.
I’m so glad you were there to rescue your little ducks , yay!

I don't know how old the drake is, we adopted him from someone when we gave her a laying hen and she gave us a KC drake. He seems old, but we have no way of knowing, she thought he was only 2 yo.

We already took him to the feed store, he's in their drake pen now. He's no longer a threat to my little ones.

We had 5 KC hens, and the drake killed one of them by drowning her about a week ago. We currently have 4 KC laying hens, and 8 ducklings (7 Magpie and 1 KC).

I am aware of the drake/chicken issue. He's never got one of our chickens to mate with them. We have a rooster, though our roo is a bit underprotective of his girls, but he does an OK job so far. Just today he was sitting on one of the nesting boxes pretending to be a broody hen smh...

get rid of him. get a rooster instead. ducks are just like that, and it's a wonder they survive in the wild.

We took him this morning and rehomed him. I have a rooster, though I hope to raise up a better on in this batch of baby chicks that recently hatched or in the batch about to hatch in a few days.