dont wont dry

[PearlRaine]

I have a female alysbury duck and she doesnt stay dry. I have check her gland it looks healthy, even like my ducks gland who does stay dry. she dries off eventually. but just gets wet when in the water
she has this problem when she was just a baby too, should I be worried?

 

[sourland]

It all depends upon your climate. I would limit access to swimming water if there is danger of her becoming hypothermic.

 

[KaleIAm]

I have a similar issue with one of my ducks - likely not the exactly the same problem.

My 6.5 year old pekin, Thimbleberry, stays wet for a long time when the other ducks are dry almost instantly. She has poor feather quality, a lot of her feathers don't, "zip," together. I took her to the vet and she has no external parasites and her preen gland looks great. She's been having this issue for about 2 years. The vet told me to add flax oil or freshly ground flax to her food - I did it for several months and it didn't help so I stopped. The ducks didn't like the flavor and I felt like they were eating less.

The one big problem for us is that when it gets really cold outside Thimbleberry's feathers freeze. We do take away access to swimming water, but obviously she has to drink and she does that exuberant thing where she dunks her head in the bucket and splashes the water down her back, wings, and tail - which stay wet for hours and freeze. My vet told me to bring her inside when it gets below freezing. I keep her in the bathroom with the window open so she, hopefully, doesn't acclimate to indoor temps.

 

[Isaac 0]

As Pekins age, they often become lazy, and tend not to practice hygiene often, may not molt as well, overall their feather quality worsens and the water repellency of the feather greatly decreases. I have dealt with the same problem, and once winter sets in, there's not much you can do to improve the feather quality. If the weather is warm, the best thing is to get her into water, and do that regularly to keep the feathers locked, clean, and water repellent. If it is cold, keep her out of water as she may become hypothermic, but misting her feathers lightly during the warmest part of the day to keep them somewhat clean would be good too.

 

[KaleIAm]

As Pekins age, they often become lazy, and tend not to practice hygiene often, may not molt as well, overall their feather quality worsens and the water repellency of the feather greatly decreases. I have dealt with the same problem, and once winter sets in, there's not much you can do to improve the feather quality. If the weather is warm, the best thing is to get her into water, and do that regularly to keep the feathers locked, clean, and water repellent. If it is cold, keep her out of water as she may become hypothermic, but misting her feathers lightly during the warmest part of the day to keep them somewhat clean would be good too.

Lol, so my problem is that I have a lazy duck. :-D That sounds about right. When we go foraging the other ducks find their own bugs. Thimbleberry sits down beside me and waits for me to find bugs and hand feed them to her. ;-)

What you describe sounds exactly like Thimbleberry. She doesn't molt well, ect. I do provide fresh swimming water everyday it isn't very cold - and she happily splashes around in it. But I've never misted her like a parrot. I'll try that, thank you!!