Drakes & Offspring

[texasjenn]

Our 2 scovie ladies just hatched their first clutch and boy are those 16 little ducklings the cutest! However now that we have these new additons to the flock I am curious about a few things....

Right now we have 1 drake and 3 adult ladies - what is the best course of action to take on the ducklings once we are able to determine the boys from the girls? I know that multiple drakes can cause issues in a flock but wasn't sure how that works when all the new males are the offspring of the adult drake....

Also, and this is an odd question, if we only have 1 drake in the flock is there a chance for inbreeding and him mating with his female offspring and will that cause issues?

We do have plans to keep a handful of the babies and place out the rest....

 

[jdywntr]

Our 2 scovie ladies just hatched their first clutch and boy are those 16 little ducklings the cutest! However now that we have these new additons to the flock I am curious about a few things....

Right now we have 1 drake and 3 adult ladies - what is the best course of action to take on the ducklings once we are able to determine the boys from the girls? I know that multiple drakes can cause issues in a flock but wasn't sure how that works when all the new males are the offspring of the adult drake....

Also, and this is an odd question, if we only have 1 drake in the flock is there a chance for inbreeding and him mating with his female offspring and will that cause issues?

We do have plans to keep a handful of the babies and place out the rest....

First, cute, cute, cute.

Depending on how many of the ducklings you plan to keep will determine if you will have problems with too many drakes. If you were to keep one male and several females, they may be okay with the adults. It is kind of a wait and see. Once they are mature, it does not matter that your drake is the father of the ducklings.

Your adult drake would mate his offspring just as male offspring would mate mothers and siblings will also mate. This would be considered line breeding and is a form of breeding that tends to bring out some traits (good or bad). If these are your pets or a food source, I wouldn't worry about the inbreeding for several generations. You could always bring in a new drake at some point in the future to broaden the gene pool but it takes a very long time of inbreeding to result in the deformities we see in horror movies.