Boy duck FIGHTING our other boys!!!

[Alicia0795]

Ok so we have 9 ducks. We have 5 girls and 4 boys. We recently got a boy pekin duck from my boyfriends work because he was going to be food so we took him home. The duck has NEVER met other ducks in his life. He has only been around chickens so he pretty much thinks he is a chicken. The first couple of days, he avoided the other ducks completely and just stuck with the chickens. He seemed kind of freaked out by them and ran away every time they came near him. After a couple days, he started going up to the boy ducks and biting them meanly and going for their necks. I have no clue what happened! He just started to freak out and bite them. I know when i look it up, it says they usually fight over females, but this duck does not like other ducks! he likes chickens and tries to mate with our chickens! lol. Anyways. Anyone have any suggestions? I don't want to get rid of him because he is older and he isn't going to live much longer, mine as well give him the rest of his time kind of happy. I want them to get along! If we separate them, they try to fight each other through the fence. What happened!!!!???

 

[Onlyducks]

Introducing another male into a group with so few females often results in what you are seeing. Without more females, the fighting will continue, most likely. It really doesn't matter if he likes the female ducks or not. It's pretty much instinctive to fight the other males. Other than getting more females, which might help, or just separating him and letting them bite through the fence so they can't do so much damage, there aren't many options. This may be the reason the previous owners intended to eat him.

 

[Finny]

Your drake may be fighting your other drakes because there are not so many girls, but since you said he does not bother with the girls, i think it is a dominance thing. I keep an all drake flock and i see this behavior when i introduce new drakes into the flock. I believe your drake is trying to establish dominace over your other drakes. Until a pecking order is established, this behavior will continue. This is normal for drakes to do and you shouldn't worry. It will just take time for them to establish a pecking order. I hope this helped

 

[Alicia0795]

Thanks! That did help that makes sense because he is older and bigger than my other boys.