abrasive male duck with specific female duck

[Joanna Ryder]

hello all this will be my first post
so i have 7 ducks and 55 chickens, and yes they all have names and i can tell 95% of them apart .... anyway i’ve had to separate some of the ducks due to one of the male ducks being extreamly aggressive with one of the females ... everyone else gets along fine in any combination. i would like to be able to join all the ducks together again because the side of the coop that was supposed to be theirs has access to the pond. currently we have to do a lot of dosey do in order to get everyone bath time and i wanted to be able to let them all have free reign of the pond whenever they like. if it helps i have 3 boys and 4 girls.

 

[Miss Lydia]

Welcome to BYC

You drake to duck ratio is out of whack you def need more females the proper ratio should be at least 3 females per drake to keep things like this from happening. You can give this particular drake time out on his own which may put him in a less dominant role when you let him back with everyone But if you remove him from the rest for about a week the rest of the ducks have access to the pond. Don't put your drake in with your chickens though he may go after the hens. You can make a temporary pen inside a pen for times like this then take it down once they are all back together.

 

[Nyla]

I agree^ You need more females or to re-home some males.

 

[chickens really]

Too many Drakes..One Drake to three Hens...Get rid of the extra Drakes..ASAP...

 

[Joanna Ryder]

i understand the easy answer is the ratio situation but please understand i could have 3 and 3 and all is fine the only issue is when coco ( the drake ruen i think) is with ginger ( the pekin girl) i could literally leave her in a separate space and the other 3 boys and 3 girls all get along fine ... also i had another pekin girl before that was a target for coco as well ... sort of wondering if perkins are more desirable due to all the uv light spectrum mating stuff

 

[Nyla]

Is Ginger the only Pekin? Some times them looking different tend to stand out and some drakes may not like the different one.

 

[Joanna Ryder]

ginger is the only girl pekin at this time but we did have her sister previously who was also targeted

 

[Conan]

It could be that your hens have chosen which drakes they want and none of them want him. Some sort of misguided aggression. Honestly though, you are going to have some abused hens come spring if you don't get rid of all but one male. That or add like twelve females in there.
If you have other animals (like goats etc) you could try popping him in their pen for awhile. We put our aggressive males in with our lady pigs and they did just fine. Until they attacked each other in spring in a Mad Max - Thunderdome sort of way, but could work for just the one fella.

 

[Miss Lydia]

It could very well be her color or lack of color that sets her apart from the other females.

It's our responsibility to protect our females [all our ducks] so if she is being a victim please make sure she is safe, You may have to make the hard decision to rehome her. If your not willing to rehome any of your drakes. That would give you 3 of each but that may not go over so good come spring when breeding season really gets under way. Drakes are really rough on their females. To the point of drowning by gang raping.

 

[Conan]

It could very well be her color or lack of color that sets her apart from the other females.

It's our responsibility to protect our females [all our ducks] so if she is being a victim please make sure she is safe, You may have to make the hard decision to rehome her. If your not willing to rehome any of your drakes. That would give you 3 of each but that may not go over so good come spring when breeding season really gets under way. Drakes are really rough on their females. To the point of drowning by gang raping.

I agree. I have 11 girls and only 2 drakes and I still feel bad for the ladies every spring. If we didn't hatch eggs, I wouldn't even bother with drakes.

I've only had ducks for a few years so I am a novice at best, but I thought I read somewhere on here at one point that drakes can mellow with age and become a bit gentler with the girls (a little better at what they do). Is there any merit to that?