Aggressive Pekin Help Please!

[sunnyfishy]

I'm new to the boards and have had ducks for a little more than a year now. We started with 2 pekins (mating pair) last spring, and they were great. A friend gave us 3 chickens and a rooster, they're fine and friendly. This year, we started the year with two more little ducks, but this time what looks like a blue swedish (male) and rouen (female). While we were raising them, we had an unfortunate accident with the female pekin and a neighbours dog, so long story short, we introduced the two new ducks to the male pekin. He was fine with them until we decided to replace the departed pekin with another female pekin.

Then the male, aptly named Velociraptor, got very aggressive at both little ducks. My rouen is quick and can generally get away and they have a massive yard to move around in, but for some reason both the little ducks stay right near the pekins despite getting repeatedly mounted. It's very stressful. And now we have 6 baby pekins that we were incubating, and the male shows literally no aggression to them, and they are his young, but they were raised indoors and it's not like he saw them hatch and knows they're his. What can we do? I really don't want to get rid of him, because he was my first duck, but the stress on the two littler ducks is really disheartening.

 

[Richb353]

Hello,
I had to introduce 20+ ducklings to the dominant male of the prior flock. It did not go well. His attacks were not out of meanness, but out of it being mating season. In the end, I kept them separated until the ducklings were full sized and could fend for themselves. I'm told that the ducks will eventually work out a pecking order of their own, but it's not pretty and will incur many plucked feathers.

The good news: The dominant aggressive male no longer picks on the other 22 ducks of the flock
The bad news: Cause a coyote got him!

 

[sunnyfishy]

We've had this problem for about two? months now, and it just seems like it's not getting any better. We're hoping the new pekin ducklings, since they get along with the littler ducks (looking at some pictures on here it seems our female is really secretly just a mallard mix), will protect or at least distract the male from being aggressive.

So...is repeated separation going to make him more or less aggressive? We let our ducks roam our yard, because we have a very good watch poodle who patrols the yard for them all day, so I just don't understand why the two small ducks stay around the aggressive male. There are 3 acres for them to stay away from each other. We don't have a coop for them yet, they all stay in a greenhouse and we have to separate the aggressive male every night in a dog crate :T

 

[Amiga]

Ducks and ducklings don't always do the smart thing.

I would keep them separated - make a temporary pen for the littles - and supervise time together from time to time. Hormones make for some strange behavior. Over time things can improve.