Drake to hen ratio

[Ratchnick]

In nature, male to female duck ratio is equal at birth, 50-50. And it seems to work for them. I wonder what force shifts this ratio to a preferable 1:3 when the same ducks are kept in one's backyard? And is there a way to counter this force instead of "hoarding" females (for the lack of a better word) and making a lot of male ducks sad and lonely?

Metzers says a 1:1 ratio works. I think that does not scale well from commercial size to your backyard. For what its wort i am 1:1 right now no issues yet fingers crossed.

 

[Pollo Blanco]

In nature, male to female duck ratio is equal at birth, 50-50. And it seems to work for them.

Last wild ducks that I watched last week had two drakes chasing a hen for about five minutes, including a lot of short flights, diving beneath the water while one drake dove after her and the other chasing on the surface, etc. They finally exhausted her and then mounted the attack. Or should I say attacked by mounting?

Interestingly, most of the other drakes had two or three hens with them, and were calmly watching the mating mayhem unfold.

But to answer the OPs question, I have six hens per drake and this seems to keep the drakes from fighting too.

Domestic ducks have quite a bit in common with wild ducks, but there are a few important considerations to keep in mind. One of these is that the females can easily be over bred if they are captive.

 

[3bird]

Loads of good advice and experience sharing here. I'll simply add our own experience. We currently keep one drake with five hens, but it requires management from about now through September (we live in Maine). For us, the domination issue is a bigger issue than the actual mating. Our drake will often pick one or two girls that he wants to dominate but not mate with. This manifests itself in him running them down and standing on them, so we keep him separate from that girl or girls. During the "off-season," he's fine with them.

When I say management, what I mean is that we need to be vigilant when they are all free-ranging together (which they do at least 2x/day), and we need to be set-up to separate the flock during the day and at night. In terms of separation, we still want them to all be together and be able to see each other. We have two fenced pastures for daytime use, and we have a separate fenced area inside the run for nights. We generally separate them in groups (no duck is ever alone), and we mix those groups up so they don't form "separate flocks." Interestingly, our drake can be with his favorite girl alone all night with no problem. In fact, she often runs into that area first when we put them in at night.

It was not our experience that the first year was the worst. The third year was probably the worst, but that was also the first year (I think) we went to a 1:5 ratio. There are so many variables. The only truly good advice that probably applies to everyone is to make sure you can easily separate your flock if you have a drake (both during the day and in a predator proof scenario at night).

Good luck and keep us posted!

 

[mrdelurk]

One thing I noticed with my 20 duckies is that some drakes will just grow up into terrible characters no matter what's the ratio; they'll terrorize the girls, the ducklings, even chickens. Once I sold those 'gangsta males', see miracle - harmony came, the next alpha duck did not continue the behavior. Perhaps because it's a Muscovy, while the "gangstas" weren't. The females do show a few missing feathers on their backs/necks nowadays, but it's always them who initiate, by bobbing the head up and down to signal "I'm in the mood"... go figure. Maybe what we need is to just crochet them some soft neck covers for the drakes to grab onto?

 

[Yardmom]

In the wild ducks have all the space they want. If completely free ranging I think 1:1 can work, but a human perspective about what is working and a ducks perspective are 2 different things. The ducks will mate regularly. The ducks will dominate other ducks. I don't have one to 1:1 but it is getting close. (I have ducklings on the way to get 1:4 again) In the mean time I am watching the ducks start to pair off, as we go into mating season. As they pair off the behavior humans are worried about tapers off. I do want to add that if you keep the ducks in an enclosure you would need to keep a closer eye on the drake behavior as the females have no escape.