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Duck being picked on—pulling feathers

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Duckworth said:
Thanks for bringing that up. I haven’t this winter. Everything seemed fine before I had surgery and my focus was on getting through that. I counted on my husband and son to keep a good eye on things, but though they are good at maintaining things, they aren’t good at spotting problems. I have frozen peas and will thaw some and put them out for the ducks. Through the fall, I gave them everything that was in my vegetable garden that I knew wouldn’t harm them, but once I got hurt and the weather changed, I didn’t supplement their diet with greens because I didn’t have any coming out of the garden. We are now eating what I canned all summer. I didn’t even think about there being no scraps for the ducks! Oops!!
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Definitely I don't think it's a protein deficiency but a need for greens..
 
Yes but eating feathers is usually lack of protein. And I. Winter when protein is at its lowest because bugs are hibernating they can need the extra protein in their diet not just when molting which is very important also. So mine get as a treat salmon and peas dry dog food along with dried mealworms and 6 way scratch for their afternoon treat in winter time . They also get greens a couple times a week.
 
Miss Lydia said:
Yes but eating feathers is usually lack of protein. And I. Winter when protein is at its lowest because bugs are hibernating they can need the extra protein in their diet not just when molting which is very important also. So mine get as a treat salmon and peas dry dog food along with dried mealworms and 6 way scratch for their afternoon treat in winter time . They also get greens a couple times a week.
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Your 100% positive about that?
 
Well, Flipper will need protein to regrow her feathers, so I’ll make the cat food available to her and give greens to all of them along with their regular Flock Raiser/All Flock and see whether that improves things. Flipper is the smallest of the four and looks slightly different from them, but she has also always seemed to be their leader. All of the other ducks’ feathers are in great shape, so I was thinking this was a social issue until I saw one of the ducks eat a feather and realized that there were no loose feathers in the pen or house.

It’s been very icy this winter, which was treacherous when I had one arm strapped to my body and throwing my balance off. A fall and reinjury would have meant a shoulder replacement that I’m trying to put off for as long as possible, since I don’t want to outlive the artificial joint. My husband did fall down the back porch steps and we thought he’d broken his arm, but fortunately, it was just a huge bruise. I checked on the ducks regularly during those six weeks, but didn’t do all of the daily chores related to their care and was thinking about not getting hurt. I’ve only started feeling “normal” in the last week. I wish I had put the pieces together sooner. I would have written in here, sooner, but the symptoms of the problem started up about the same time as everything else that was put off during my recovery hit. It really bothers me to have not given our ducks everything they needed all the way along!
 

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