boy or girl? (Pekin)

[hfchristy]

I finally got some video of my Pekin making noise. I'd appreciate any input anyone can give about whether I've got a girl or a boy here. If it's a girl, she has a home waiting for her. If it's a boy, I need to decide whether he can be dinner or if I need to find him a nice home. Either way, it can't stay here. Just a little too big to hang with the bantams...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVc542nITJM

These sound like quacks to me, but I thought Pekins were supposed to be loud, and compared to my bantam/Cayuga cross and the Welsh Harlequin, he/she is quite quiet, both in terms of volume and frequency. This was a rare chatty episode tonight.

Thanks!!

 

[hfchristy]

surely somebody must have an opinion!!

 

[Pyxis]

If that's just her quacking in the videos and not another duck, she sure sounds girly to me! They can be loud, as Peanut, my girl, would be happy to tell you, but they aren't loud all the time. Peanut mostly keeps the volume down when she's chatting with the others. Loud quacks are only for when she's really excited!

 

[Ilovemyduckies]

She is definitely a girl. She sounds like a girl and doesn't have the curly tail that the boys have.

 

[hfchristy]

Oh good! I thought she was at first, but for the last few weeks I've only heard the occasional raspy putt-putt-putt from her, with the occasional "honk" when I wasn't really looking. Like I said, this was a rare chatty episode!

Is there an element of dominance in the quacking? We gave 2/3 of our ducklings to another family, and I don't really hear much more quacking at their place than here, despite them ending up with about 6 girls, and only 2 here (plus one lame duck in the house.) We just started splitting the ducks into two groups at night, rather than having their cages connected. When they're all together only the semi-bantam quacks. When they're split up, Sweetie quacks now, too. I don't think it's a "help! we can't get the flock together!" quack because it didn't happen when we first separated them. Just now that they're settling into this as a routine.

None of the drakes have curly tail feathers yet, so I can't go by that. When does that usually happen?