Chicken VS Duck Aggressive Behavior?

[Scifisarah]

I have just about had it with my chickens... Yesterday I came outside to find one of my favorite bantam cochins almost dead from being pecked so bad from the other chickens. The entire back of her white skull bone was exposed and I had to call my husband home to finish her off because I am too much of a wuss.

My question is, will my call ducks ever act like this to each other? I am thinking of getting rid of all my chickens and just concentrating on the ducks. Are they so violent when introducing new adults or older ducklings? They seem so sweet to me now, but so did my chickens the first while I had them.

 

[ChickenToes]

I haven't had a human-aggressive duck yet. Sometimes certain drakes can be buttheads, and they can be rough with the females, and can give them little bald patches in places. Other drakes are sweethearts. We are currently without any drakes, and just have 5 females (and 1 chicken) that live together and get along just fine. I think as long as they aren't overcrowded, ducks usually aren't aggressive to each other. Our pen is pretty big, it's at least 400 square feet, so there's plenty of room for them to run around and explore.

 

[L0rraine]

I find that most of my chickens seem to be much more mean spirited than my ducks as well. However my current small flock of ducks seem unwilling to accept my two seven week old ducklings even though they look like adults. The ducklings are still doing that whistling peeping thing and I seems to make the adult ducks very uncomfortable.

 

[FenDruadin]

I have a friend who won't keep chickens because she doesn't like that kind of violence in her yard. She ADORES her Runner ducks.

I don't have call duck experience, but I know that I can put a small or weak duckling in with a batch of healthy ducklings, and they really get along fine. I even have mixed-age ducklings together and they're fine, which I know is a huge no-no for chickens. I've never had a duck injured by another duck, though I am careful not to have adults around young birds that they don't know (but once they're used to them, I can even let weeks-old ducklings run with adults without problems).

Good luck. I think you'll like duck "attitude" a little better.