What can we do with our drake duck, 4 months old, who is attacking our chickens? He's pulling out the feathers on their necks and trying to climb on them ... obviously he wants a mate ... but even if we get more baby ducks for him to get a female for him it will be several months before they are old enough for him to mate with. We try to keep them separated as much as we can and when they are all in the yard free ranging together the chickens can keep out of his way by hopping up on blocks and things but when we HAVE to put them all in the pen together he's a nightmare. Can we leave him alone in the yard while the others are in the pen? He has a shelter in the yard with food and water that he goes in with the geese at night but it's just a three sided shed that we close up so it's not really protection from the predators. Can he defend himself well enough for a few hours to leave him alone?
The deal is, we give all our birds free range of the whole yard during the day if we are home or just running to the store or something and we have babies in contained areas within the coop that we keep closed while everyone else is ranging. But late in the afternoon or early evening we run everyone in to the pen and open the coop so it's easier to catch them all at dark and so we can clean the yard up from their continual digging and scratching. But we also run them in the yard and use the geese as guards from cats and oppossums and skunks, etc if we are going to be gone for several hours during the day. That's when the duck seems to be at his worst. So the question is can he guard himself from predators if he's not with the geese? (the cats leave him alone but the wild critters ...)
We don't want to get rid of him because he's already won prizes in shows and is a beautiful duck that we are planing to breed in the spring.
The deal is, we give all our birds free range of the whole yard during the day if we are home or just running to the store or something and we have babies in contained areas within the coop that we keep closed while everyone else is ranging. But late in the afternoon or early evening we run everyone in to the pen and open the coop so it's easier to catch them all at dark and so we can clean the yard up from their continual digging and scratching. But we also run them in the yard and use the geese as guards from cats and oppossums and skunks, etc if we are going to be gone for several hours during the day. That's when the duck seems to be at his worst. So the question is can he guard himself from predators if he's not with the geese? (the cats leave him alone but the wild critters ...)
We don't want to get rid of him because he's already won prizes in shows and is a beautiful duck that we are planing to breed in the spring.
