Bare duck wings

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Antismama

Chirping
6 Years
May 24, 2017
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I have 3 ducks: one Pekin (male), one Kahki (female) and one female offspring of the other 2. The "daughter" has had - with varying intensity - bare quills on her wings for months. In the spring I thought it was overmating/aggression/stress from the male, then I thought maybe a misfire on molting. But here we are with a relatively calm male, molting done, and her wings look worse than ever. Thought about self-plucking but have never seen her feathers more than the others. They all free-range (within our semi-woodsy fenced yard), and I feed them chicken/cat food and fresh greens daily. The other two ducks are fully feathered and gorgeous. She looks healthy otherwise, eats great, and lays an egg nearly every day. The only other thing I can think to mention is that her feathers have always seemed much oilier than the other two ducks. Any ideas?
 
First of all cat food is okay as a treat once in a while but shouldn’t be sole feed look at your protein content shouldn’t be over 30% I believe @casportpony can elaborate on that. Poultry really need a feed that is made for what their bodies need an all flock feed would be ideal since it’s formulated for all poultry, most feed stores and TSC carry an all flock look for a pic on the bag that has ducks and other poultry on it. She maybe deficient in some vitamin or mineral and is just more so than the others. Your seeing it in feather quality. Probably wouldn’t hurt to get her on a good poultry vitamin for a while too. Just to give even more of a boost. Make double sure the drakes not making it worse by mating with her seems most drakes are still at it even with waning daylight and cold temps. You may have to give him some time out so she can recover.
 
Looking back I see the way I wrote, it looks like I am saying I give chicken-flavored cat food as their primary food. I meant I give chicken (Poultry) food and cat food. In fact, give two kinds of poultry food daily - one is indeed the all-flock from TSC, and the other is an all-waterfowl food (they don't seem to like this one much though) also from TSC. I will cut back on the cat food - got the idea from Storey's Guide and the Pekin goes nuts for it - but it is 32% protein. They forage plenty of protein (bugs/worms) in the yard and I do switch over to mealworms in the winter. I will get her a multi-vitamin like you suggested, thanks - do you recommend any one in particular? The male used to bother her a lot more but he seems all about the khaki now. I would even say the "daughter" is the odd man out in this group - would social stress do this?
 
Last edited:
dpenning said:
Picture would help. Could it be mites of some sort? I really haven’t a clue. @misslydia any ideas?
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She is very dark colored, so you don't really notice the problem until she stretches out her wings and I never seem to have the camera handy when that happens. It just looks kind of skeletal - about half the wing has bare quills.
 
Antismama said:
Possibly as long as 9 months - so about half her life. It does vary and several times I've thought the problem was resolving. But the obvious stress factors aren't active right now yet she looks more bare and winter is coming on.
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Have you ever treated for lice or mites? I have a couple right now that have the ratty bare wings so that's what I'm gonna do, I'm gonna treat them for lice and mites.
 

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