Drake injuring duck hens

badhabitz98 · Nov 27, 2016

My drake has been mating with the duck hens for a few months and everything has been fine. I just went out of town on Wednesday and the petsitter has been having to bring a different duck hen in the house almost every night. I have one drake with four duck hens. Everyone is healthy except that he is going after their feet and tearing feathers out of their backs and wings. He will actually run after them and grab their foot to stop them from running. He drags them backwards by their foot and then starts tearing feathers out. He's broken their feather shafts and caused a bad infection in one of the girl's wings and her foot was so beat up, she couldn't walk for two days. Does anyone know why he would all of a sudden start doing this to him? This isn't normal mating behavior from him so I don't think it has anything to do with mating. I really don't want to have to put him down, but I will if I need to. He can't be hurting the girls like this. I have three duck hens in the house healing. I will be home in a few hours and I'm building him a "penalty box" in the coop to let him cool his jets. Besides that, I have no idea what to do.

sourland · Nov 27, 2016

I am really not certain why he is doing this, but it is unacceptable. Separate him from the hens for a couple of weeks until they are completely healed. If upon reintroduction he continues with this behavior he would have to leave my flock.

badhabitz98 · Nov 27, 2016

Thank you. That's what I'll try. I'm on my way home now. I had to go home the second night we were gone to make sure it wasn't a slipped tendon because she wasn't walking and was splaying her leg out weird. She's healing well now. Not a fun way to spend a vacation and I'm sure my petsitter was freaking out too. I'm just glad she caught what the drake was doing and she caught the other two injured hens quickly before it got bad.