- Feb 22, 2013
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Hi! I'm trying to work out exactly what I need to do to make the most of this 'knowledgable' forum and I do realize that it is 'Backyard Chickens' when I actually have ducks 
but was led here by a duck question I posed on Google. By way of introduction, I live in rural Australia in a lush green valley several hours from the coast...have a dam ( large pond) and a duck house, just finished sitting on the edge of the pond with a ramp leading down to the water. We do have a fox problem which is why we built the house but my flock of seven Khaki Campbell's, five Muscovies, two Geese and four Pekins don't want to go in at night. They have worked out their own protection by swimming all night to avoid attack and forage and sleep throughout the day. Wonder if this is stressful/unnatural for them and as winter approaches too cold? The ducks are all around three to five months old and the drakes (KC's) just have their adult colors. I'm thinking I will have to begin training them and planning a holding pen to lure them in at night with food and then up the ramp into their house. The girls are not yet laying and I know will need somewhere to go for nesting, so hoping they will naturally embrace their house as a place to lay.
This morning I found one of my drakes dead in the water, not a mark on him. He was looking and eating normally yesterday, fresh feed, beans, lettuce, scratch mix, the usual. I'm thinking he could have been bitten by a snake, eaten some toxic plant? What I do wonder , is if it's possible he has been drowned, in a competitive way by the other two, much more robust drakes? Does anyone know if this is competitive drake behavior at all, once hormones in a flock kick-in? Are there any other reasons a seemingly perfectly healthy duck dies so suddenly? Thanks ahead for any feedback or suggestions you may have in improving my ducks life. Don't want to just wander on without knowing I could make a better choice to keep them well...safe. Thanks!
but was led here by a duck question I posed on Google. By way of introduction, I live in rural Australia in a lush green valley several hours from the coast...have a dam ( large pond) and a duck house, just finished sitting on the edge of the pond with a ramp leading down to the water. We do have a fox problem which is why we built the house but my flock of seven Khaki Campbell's, five Muscovies, two Geese and four Pekins don't want to go in at night. They have worked out their own protection by swimming all night to avoid attack and forage and sleep throughout the day. Wonder if this is stressful/unnatural for them and as winter approaches too cold? The ducks are all around three to five months old and the drakes (KC's) just have their adult colors. I'm thinking I will have to begin training them and planning a holding pen to lure them in at night with food and then up the ramp into their house. The girls are not yet laying and I know will need somewhere to go for nesting, so hoping they will naturally embrace their house as a place to lay. This morning I found one of my drakes dead in the water, not a mark on him. He was looking and eating normally yesterday, fresh feed, beans, lettuce, scratch mix, the usual. I'm thinking he could have been bitten by a snake, eaten some toxic plant? What I do wonder , is if it's possible he has been drowned, in a competitive way by the other two, much more robust drakes? Does anyone know if this is competitive drake behavior at all, once hormones in a flock kick-in? Are there any other reasons a seemingly perfectly healthy duck dies so suddenly? Thanks ahead for any feedback or suggestions you may have in improving my ducks life. Don't want to just wander on without knowing I could make a better choice to keep them well...safe. Thanks!
