We have 2 drakes (in with 5 females), one is the father (Duck Norris) of the other (Quackmire). Norris is a year old and Quack is just over 5 months old. They're the same size. We originally had Norris and 3 of the females. We then hatched Quack and got him 2 females of his own. Usually the flock all hang out together with no issues. I've even seen the boys in the pool mating with "their" girls right next to each other.
The boys have always been fine together (after a few weeks of the father chasing the younger off a little bit at the very beginning). They've had one extremely docile 'fight', where they just pushed each other around for 2 minutes, but were friends 5 minutes later.
But recently the younger is chasing the father away and won't let him free range with the others. He doesn't do it every day, but he is relentless when he does. It started one morning last week. Norris won't fight back, Quack just chases him all over the yard and even pulls out some of his feathers. The first day it happened, I tried putting Quack in time-out. He escaped out of there after a while though and everything seemed fine, they were all just freeranging together. Then they had no problems for several days. Yesterday it started up again. It went on for most of the day. At one stage they were all in the pool and Norris was just sitting out in his own, like he wasn't allowed in.
There was one point when I went out and Quack was sitting with "his" girls and Norris was on the other side of the yard with the rest. But that didn't last long. This morning it's all on again. I have seen Norris peck back at Quack once or twice - but only in a scenario where Quack has wandered away and Norris is standing with the girls. When Quack tries to return, Norris has given him a quick peck or chase, but they allowed him to return with no problems.
They are in a decent size pen (with 3 different sleeping areas) at night and freerange around our 1/2 acre backyard during the day.
Should I intervene? No-one is getting hurt but I'm feeling bad for my boy being chased out of the flock! Is this behaviour ok?
The boys have always been fine together (after a few weeks of the father chasing the younger off a little bit at the very beginning). They've had one extremely docile 'fight', where they just pushed each other around for 2 minutes, but were friends 5 minutes later.
But recently the younger is chasing the father away and won't let him free range with the others. He doesn't do it every day, but he is relentless when he does. It started one morning last week. Norris won't fight back, Quack just chases him all over the yard and even pulls out some of his feathers. The first day it happened, I tried putting Quack in time-out. He escaped out of there after a while though and everything seemed fine, they were all just freeranging together. Then they had no problems for several days. Yesterday it started up again. It went on for most of the day. At one stage they were all in the pool and Norris was just sitting out in his own, like he wasn't allowed in.
There was one point when I went out and Quack was sitting with "his" girls and Norris was on the other side of the yard with the rest. But that didn't last long. This morning it's all on again. I have seen Norris peck back at Quack once or twice - but only in a scenario where Quack has wandered away and Norris is standing with the girls. When Quack tries to return, Norris has given him a quick peck or chase, but they allowed him to return with no problems.
They are in a decent size pen (with 3 different sleeping areas) at night and freerange around our 1/2 acre backyard during the day.
Should I intervene? No-one is getting hurt but I'm feeling bad for my boy being chased out of the flock! Is this behaviour ok?
Thankfully they haven't had any bad fights yet. The older drake doesn't actually seem at all interested in fighting him. It seems like it's starting to tone down over the last couple of days. At first he was chasing him and pulling his feather out, then it became just chasing him around the yard and not letting him near the flock, but no feather pulling, now he only chases him a couple of metres and then is ok when he rejoins the flock. I can see Norris is on edge a bit, looking for whether Quack is too close and he might get chased off, but he's not standing on the other side of the yard anymore. 
