Duck afraid of the water...

[Tevyes Dad]

Hi All,

Just looking for some ideas. Noir, our black runner, seems to have an issue with the pool - she doesn't like it. For those of you who don't know her, she is about 1-1/4 years old. She is generally happy (although a little less so since Snow's passing). She weighs 4 lbs, 1/2 oz, which is not too bad for a little runner. She has a healthy appetite and has really good feet. We have noticed lately she is never in the pool. Her feathers are very dry and somewhat damaged. She is not one of the ducks that Kaine is aggressive toward, in fact she tries to be near Kaine as much as possible (when Kaine is in solitary, she hangs outside his cage.) The other day I saw her nares were clogged and I put her in the pool. She blew them out then immediately left the pool (she has no problem negotiating the ramp). Today I set her in the pool and pressed the issue. She swam like a duckling that hasn't started its preen gland yet: She floated low in the water, she pumped her legs a lot to stay in place and got soaked pretty thoroughly. When she wanted to dodge a hand in the water, she could swim fine, but she was lacking the normal buoyancy a duck should have.

I decided to take pity on her and brought her in the house and set her in the bathtub. As soon as the water was up to her ankles, she started exhibiting normal "ducky" behaviors like splashing water across her back with her head and trying to dunk herself in the water and flapping her wings. (She didn't do any of these things in the pool.) I let the tub fill up enough that she had the choice of walking on her toes or swimming. She went back and forth, and even supported herself by swimming when flapping her wings (instead of just standing and doing it.) We let her splash around about 10 minutes (by then she wanted out and we didn't want her getting water logged since she obviously was missing her coating. We set her out on a couple towels and she went through a normal (but somewhat abbreviated) preening routine. I looked at and took a picture of her preen glands:



I could feel a very light coat of oil there and the "wick" feathers have a pretty good rainbow sheen. I could see no signs of insects or insect bites in her feathers either. Right now I am guessing that this is a vicious cycle:

Her feathers are in poor repair and dry so she doesn't float well.
She doesn't float well so she doesn't like swimming.
She doesn't swim so she doesn't preen.
She doesn't preen so she doesn't coat herself with oil, or pull her broken feathers so new ones can grow sooooooo - Her feathers are in poor repair.

With no advice, I will bring her in daily for a forced bath and preening session and see if her plumage improves.

With advice, I might do something else

 

[TickinChicken]

I'm sure it will come around there is a strong urge in ducks to be in water not only to swim but to clean them selfs we got some ducks that to my knowledge had never seen a pond before ours they where in it for hours ,don't be to worried i'm sure it will settle down and go back in, I would place some of its favourite food leading up to and around the waters edge if like my lot once head down stuffing their faces they soon forget their worries about the water and go in after a couple of days.

 

[drumstick diva]

I would let her be for now and allow her to enjoy herself in the tub. It may make her forget there is something about the pool she doesn't like. Then when you try the pool again maybe you could put some guppies or something in there. When she notices live food, she may get over her fear of the water.

Could she have some health condition that might be affecting her feather growth - worms??

 

[TickinChicken]

om insure of the infection it could just be a swelling does she feel extra warm there?
can you feel an egg? if the hen does not pass an egg VERY SOON (this IS an emergency)..she needs to see a vet unless you can see or feel an egg, and can use a syringe to poke a hole in the egg to drain it into the syringe.

 

[Tevyes Dad]

I would let her be for now and allow her to enjoy herself in the tub. It may make her forget there is something about the pool she doesn't like. Then when you try the pool again maybe you could put some guppies or something in there. When she notices live food, she may get over her fear of the water.

Could she have some health condition that might be affecting her feather growth - worms??

That is the question I am putting forth. She vocalizes well and doesn't breath poorly so I am pretty sure no gape worms, her poop looks fine which doesn't rule out all worms, but rules out some. She seemed to enjoy the tub time, so "afraid of the water" is probably overstating the issue, but she doesn't want to go in the pool (where she can't touch bottom). All the other ducks LOVE the pool and we actually put gold fish in the pool almost every Saturday. Overall she seems to be in good health except for her feathers which could be explained by her not taking care of them, and her not wanting to swim in the pool. I just don't want to overlook what might be obvious to someone who has been there, done that.

om insure of the infection it could just be a swelling does she feel extra warm there?
can you feel an egg? if the hen does not pass an egg VERY SOON (this IS an emergency)..she needs to see a vet unless you can see or feel an egg, and can use a syringe to poke a hole in the egg to drain it into the syringe.

She pops out an egg just about every day. I am sure she is not obstructed there. We have three runners who lay green eggs and every day we get 2 or 3 green runners eggs (about 50/50). So that works out to 15 eggs missed / month and if that is evenly divided that would be 5 eggs in 30 days per duck, so they are all laying just short of 6/week on average.

 

[Amiga]

With ducks, I never feel we can say there is no chance of something seriously wrong, because they can hide things so well. At the same time, let me tell you about Elf. She's my avatar.

Love that duck.

She does not like getting into the swim pan. I think it may be because her legs are so short, but I have seen her do it occasionally. She just does not seem to like it. She will wash up - goes to the edge of the swim pan, pours water over her back, flits, preens.

And her feathers are not in great shape sometimes, either. I probably ought to get her into the tub more often. She gets little tiny dabs of poo stuck to the feathers around her vent from time to time (yes, I help tidy them up or clip them off sometimes). I chalk it up to personality.

So, gentila, the tub idea makes sense to me. And this is a good reminder for me to give Elf more tub time, too.

 

[Tevyes Dad]

With ducks, I never feel we can say there is no chance of something seriously wrong, because they can hide things so well. At the same time, let me tell you about Elf. She's my avatar.

Love that duck.

She does not like getting into the swim pan. I think it may be because her legs are so short, but I have seen her do it occasionally. She just does not seem to like it. She will wash up - goes to the edge of the swim pan, pours water over her back, flits, preens.

And her feathers are not in great shape sometimes, either. I probably ought to get her into the tub more often. She gets little tiny dabs of poo stuck to the feathers around her vent from time to time (yes, I help tidy them up or clip them off sometimes). I chalk it up to personality.

So, gentila, the tub idea makes sense to me. And this is a good reminder for me to give Elf more tub time, too.

Thanks Amiga! I read somewhere a while back that runners don't like to swim as much as other ducks. My other three didn't read that article. Entie swims all the time and really only stops to eat. Dove is ALWAYS in the water if there is a chance someducky will pull her neck feathers out

(flock hoochie). And Mystique swims as much as any of the other ducks. Both Entie and Mystique are great divers and can swim several laps around the pool under water. Noir loved swimming as a duckling and I think she went in the kiddie pool before we got the big pool. But I think she hasn't been swimming much the last few months. I have really only been focused on it the last few weeks so it might have started when we got the big pool or it might have started when we lost Snow, I am not sure. I am hoping to get her feathers in decent shape so she doesn't have to work so hard in the big pool then see what she does. If worse comes to worse, we can always put out one of the small kiddie pools for her.

 

[Amiga]

Most of our Runners love being in the swim pans, some more than others. I hope and pray Noir gets her feathers fixed up. Maybe she is getting ready to molt.

 

[Tevyes Dad]

I have been on the road a lot again so we have been spotty with Noir's baths. Saturday she was running around with a clogged nare so we put her in the big pool when we were outside with the ducks. She just sat there in the water and didn't do anything except wait for her chance to leave. She came up the ramp at least 10 times and we put her back in the water. After about 10 minutes of not doing anything, we decided that she would probably get cold since she could get wet to the skin and we let her walk out - nare still clogged. We let her sun herself and do a limited preen (just her belly was wet since she just sat there in the water.) After we let her warm up for a couple hours, we grabbed her again and put her in the bath tub. We start with it empty and then I fill it until she just can't touch bottom. As soon as she had 1/2" of water, she began doing the ducky bathing actions: neck scoops, wing flaps, splashes, and blew out her nares. By the time she was floating, she was done. So I threw a couple meal worms here and there and made her swim around after them. She had no problem with that, but mostly just sat on the water when there was nothing to do. So I took her out and put her on a blanket in the living room so she could preen herself and get in a little social time. She preened herself dry then spent a little time with us. All of a sudden she wanted to leave... She wanted to climb over me and leave. We just kept putting her back in the middle of the blanket. Then she started contorting a bit.

And she bent back farther than vertical...

She was actually tilted backward...

PLOOP! out came an egg