We're having a bad day for ducks over here! Our new duck is around 8 weeks old, and we just realized that she is probably a he. We vent sexed her when she was small, but had no idea what we were doing and clearly missed something important, as she's now quite wide-legged, feathers sticking out on the back of her neck like our other drake and in the last day has started to develop a laryngitic quack. We have one male already and two females, and our drake is very rough with the girls. To wit, one of them has two inches of feathers missing from her neck. There's no way that adding another drake into the mix would be a good idea. Getting rid of a male where we live will not be easy. Right now I have to keep my drake locked up because he keeps going into the duck house and disturbing the nest in his un-ending quest to copulate by force. It's December, shouldn't mating season be over here? Or will they just keep going all year because it's hot here?
Over in the duck house, our female went broody on Oct 31st but didn't go full time broody for a few more days. Still way over the 28 day time window, though, so last night when she rolled two eggs out of the nest I candled them and saw one had tried to break out of the shell. I figured it was dead anyway, so I opened the shell up and saw that it was still alive and looked pretty messed up (and not able to survive on its own). It was pretty sad, much harder to deal with than I would have expected. I candled the other 12 eggs that she is sitting on, 2 look like non-starters, 9 are either fully black or black with an air pocket so I have no idea what that means, and one was moving. I have no idea if we are going to get any ducklings. This is our first time trying so I don't know what to do, if anything.
Over in the duck house, our female went broody on Oct 31st but didn't go full time broody for a few more days. Still way over the 28 day time window, though, so last night when she rolled two eggs out of the nest I candled them and saw one had tried to break out of the shell. I figured it was dead anyway, so I opened the shell up and saw that it was still alive and looked pretty messed up (and not able to survive on its own). It was pretty sad, much harder to deal with than I would have expected. I candled the other 12 eggs that she is sitting on, 2 look like non-starters, 9 are either fully black or black with an air pocket so I have no idea what that means, and one was moving. I have no idea if we are going to get any ducklings. This is our first time trying so I don't know what to do, if anything.
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