Advice please.. I have 4 ducks. 3 drakes and 1 duck. I love my ducks. A lot.

[DuckyChan]

(Please forgive the long post!!)
All four of my ducks are my babies. They’re spoiled rotten, eating fresh tomatoes, lettuces, and watermelon along with their standard duck food every day, and I make personal trips to the store to have all these treats, fresh bedding, and more; and they also have the two largest baby pools available. LOL
I do all this because I love my ducks. A lot. I’m up early to let them out into their backyard pen or indoor/outdoor pen(the younger two still stay in the pen that consists of half of my second garage and leading through the garage door to the section outside), and I am always interacting with them, bringing treats, changing out water and replenishing duck food pellets.
They have become a large part of my life, and, again, I just basically love my ducks.
There is a point to this.
My two Rouen drakes have become aggressive towards me and our other two slightly younger ducks, who are just now getting their adult feathers in. And now we’ve discovered that our khaki campbell is another drake. The other younger one, we believe, is a Rouen mix. We were hoping we had females, but now even having one female with another male and a pair of very aggressive males is a scary thought.
We don’t know what to do.. we love our ducks, and it kills me to see our boys brutally attacking each other. One of them is already with an eye that was so badly injured when we got him as a duckling that he can’t see out of it. Now the more alpha of the two has been attacking me - biting my skin so hard and not letting go, and I had to immediately wear only boots covering my toes and ankles. I can’t reach down to put their bowls on the ground without long heavy-duty dish gloves on for fear of their biting bills, and it’s something now both of them do.
It breaks my heart, and I don’t know why they began doing this. It was not too long after we got our other two ducklings, and I’m guessing that’s why, but what can we do? They also cannot be penned with the two younger because they viciously attack and peck at them as well.
I need advice. I keep them separated, but what comes next? I’m afraid having just one female will drive the males nuts, and it worries me for her.

Sorry for the long post!! I just need some guidance..

 

[BeetaLiK]

Maybe try separating them for a wile?

 

[ruthhope]

You definitely need to separate the female.

You now need to have separate flocks depending on your space and ability to find more ducks

For hte moment separate them into the original drake pair and hte new ducks that could be one drake and one female

Two drakes can live together and may not be aggressive with you if there isn't a female arround

As the new ducks mature, you wil need 2 more females to be sure that the females are not over mated.

I would think it is worth ordering sexed ducklings now and brooding them so that they can safely go in with your current newest ducks when they are about 4 months old . At that time, your current newest ducks will be mature and in the spring their hormone levels will be raising so that drake will definitely need more females.

You shouldn;t introduce new ducklings to your current newest ducks until the ducklings are at least 16 weeks old, as before then, the ducklings could be injured by the drake mounting them

 

[lydfou]

that is too many drakes and wwwaaayyy too few hens.

the drakes will kill the hen. and injure each other.

 

[Luv Ducks]

If you do not have room for a lot of females for these drakes I would find a way to separate them. You may have to section the pen off into four different sections. I had two drakes together for almost all summer when I saw the big Muscovy actually on top of and mating the much smaller Mallard/Rouen drake. He did not hurt it but was very rough on it and so he got rehomed even though he was one of my favorite ducks. He was so huge that he was hard on my hens and the only way I could have kept him was if he was totally alone which would not have been fair to him. I hope you can find a solution for your situation.