Cheer me up, what are the GOOD things about pekins, mallards, buffs?

[CoriM]

Wow, pekins are my favorites! Their personalities are so quirky and fun. Of course you have to spend a lot of time with them and handle them a lot when they're babies. They do have leg issues and often need more niacin in their diets when growing as babies, so make sure you have some vitamin B complex on hand to supplement if need be. They often develop splay leg, pigeon toed, or other issues otherwise. I have pekins and welsh harlequins. My pekins lay so well - large beautiful eggs, and hardly ever take a day off. I wish they would take a break. My welsh on the other hand seem to take several months off a year. Of course pekins eat more and poop more, but I find them to be so delightful. Just watch their legs.

 

[KaleIAm]

My pekin has the best personality. Despite the fact that she was adopted as an adult and was scared of me for months she is now the sweetest girl. She smooshes her chest into my knees anytime I sit down and gazes into my eyes. She's much sweeter than my welsh harlequin who I've had since she was a day old duckling! I adore that pekin duck. I might get that put on my grave stone. Here lies Kale. She adored that pekin duck.

 

[Lordofthegreenpeas]

I have no one to blame but myself for having too high of hopes and for wasting my money on overpriced 'mixed surprise ducklings', but I am so disappointed in what came. I ordered 7 surprise duckies, 5 female and 2 straight run. I ended up getting 3 female pekins, 2 female buffs and SR mallards.

I currently have blue swedish and giant french muscovys for their beauty, rarity, and fun-ness, and khaki campbells and golden 300 hybrids for their eggs.

Was hoping for a fun or odd assortment to mix everything up but ended up with 3 of the most common, boring duck breeds out there, making them way overpriced in the bargain. Metzer farms had about 20 breeds of ducks and all were hatching at the time of my order.
As they are female, the pekins will be useless for meat and from what I've read they are average/below average layers. Same for the buffs? And the mallards are as common as they get.

Anyways I am obviously a bit put out, and all is my own fault for not picking out specific birds.

Can someone help me see the bright side of these breeds? Right now I am leaning towards selling them at a loss and finding something more neat/useful in terms of egg laying etc. Won't the pekins basically be eating a ton and producing few eggs? And aren't mallards skittish and runty? I don't know much about buffs other than they are buff.

Never doing surprise birds again. I was dreaming of maybe a runner, a rare breed (welsh harlequin, saxony, cayuga, silver appleyard, swedish etc), or what I already had perhaps to thicken the breeding stock, and a few useful ones as far as proficient layers. Obviously that was unrealistic.

Tell me I am being pessimistic and silly and these are great and sensible birds to have around until they die naturally! LOL

Pekins are so fun and sweet. My drake (dippy) always does his dippy dance when I say his name and he is always so happy. My female pekin pair laverne and shirley are very sweet and nice and love attention. I've never had buff since I only do rescues and buff are rare to find dumped but I've heard they are affectionate and have a personality similar to swedish. I've had several other Pekins that went to new homes and they all had fun personalities.

 

[CHlCKEN]

personalities depend on how you raise them, not the breed! i have pekin, khaki, and rouen and they are the sweetest ducks ever

Link to wear you got clothes for them! I have ducks coming soon and I think I’m going to become a duck from all the time I plan to spend with them.

 

[KaleIAm]

Link to wear you got clothes for them! I have ducks coming soon and I think I’m going to become a duck from all the time I plan to spend with them.

Start practicing your quack.

 

[CHlCKEN]

Start practicing your quack.

I already have it mastered.

“QUACK.”

 

[Lordofthegreenpeas]

Link to wear you got clothes for them! I have ducks coming soon and I think I’m going to become a duck from all the time I plan to spend with them.

I always got my ducks clothes from the build a bear suits that you can dress the bears up with they fit my blue swedish and pekins perfectly.

 

[KaleIAm]

I already have it mastered.

“QUACK.”

Best quack ever! My ducks were very impressed!!

 

[Aunt Angus]

Pekins are so fun and sweet. My drake (dippy) always does his dippy dance when I say his name and he is always so happy. My female pekin pair laverne and shirley are very sweet and nice and love attention. I've never had buff since I only do rescues and buff are rare to find dumped but I've heard they are affectionate and have a personality similar to swedish. I've had several other Pekins that went to new homes and they all had fun personalities.

Where do you find rescues? I've tried, but can't find any out here. Most places out here (Northern California) are sanctuaries and don't seem to adopt, but rather only accept monetary donations.

 

[Lordofthegreenpeas]

I have my own rescue (centraltexasduckrescue) but there are plenty in other areas here is a list of some http://www.majesticwaterfowl.org/wfrescue.htm. I've found that wildlife rehabbers constantly need help with rehoming domestics unfortunately many domestic ducks get euthanized by wildlife rehabbers because they have noting to do with them and they can't be released.. I'd personally look contact your local wildlife rehabbers for domestics since they tend to get a lot, that's how I got dippy and most my other rescues is from people contacting the wildlife rehabber and the wildlife rehabber contacting me to get the duck. Dippy would've definitely been euthanized by a rehabber if he was taken to one he had a skull fracture and his cheek was broken he made a full recovery though.