Duck going off on her own

[corriemartin]

I've had these ten ducks (8 hens and 2 drakes) for ten months, and up to now they've been pretty much inseparable. But now one of my hens keeps going off by herself. At first I thought she was just missing the memo when the flock was moving from one place to another and getting trapped in the duck run while everyone else was going up into the pasture, and chased her out so she could rejoin them. But when she DID rejoin them, one of the drakes chased her away again, and it's happening more and more, and this afternoon, she was in the run and they were all not far away, and she could very easily have joined them.

Any ideas what's going on? She doesn't appear to be sick--she's eating, drinking, bathing, quacking, and otherwise acting normal. The drakes, however, are kindof going nuts. All year, I was really impressed with how gentlemanly they were in their mating--asking with a bunch of head-bobbing, and only climbing on if the hen reciprocated the bobs, over and over. Now they're just chasing those poor girls down, grabbing their heads and climbing on. Could this have anything to do with this hen's behavior? Is this a precursor to broodiness? (She's not in the duck house sitting on any eggs--fake OR real, but she's pretty darned near the duck house.).

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

 

[cheezenkwackers]

Ducks remind me of mean middle schoolers. Drakes are wonderful during the winter but turn into jerks come spring. Your duck is at the bottom of the pecking order. The drakes have decided to exclude her, the middle school equivalent of the unpopular girl. There really isn’t anything you can do unless you separate your drakes, put them in drake jail. The hard part about that is they need to stay in jail through the summer before they turn nice again.

 

[corriemartin]

Ducks remind me of mean middle schoolers. Drakes are wonderful during the winter but turn into jerks come spring. Your duck is at the bottom of the pecking order. The drakes have decided to exclude her, the middle school equivalent of the unpopular girl. There really isn’t anything you can do unless you separate your drakes, put them in drake jail. The hard part about that is they need to stay in jail through the summer before they turn nice again.

Bummer.

Sigh.

Not going to separate the drakes. Their only purpose is to make ducklings, and if they're going to be mean, well, I guess that's what they're going to do. They've gone through several other phases (one of the drakes very aggressively chasing the other one off, and then a period with vice versa) that they've gotten over in a couple weeks. Poor girl is pretty distressed, though, when the rest of the flock is far away. But she's with them MOST of the time.....