duck to drake ratio?

[kingmt]

I have Mallards & wandering how many drakes to keep with my ducks. I have 5 ducks & 4 drakes. How many ducks to a drake should I keep for fertile eggs?

 

[hendrix25]

i was always told, 3-4 ducks to 1 drake. one drake is enough to get some fertile eggs, but if you want lots of fertile eggs i would probably keep 2-3 drakes and get 3-4 more ducks, if that's an option. otherwise i would think you are going to have a problem with the drakes over breeding your ducks with the ratio you have now.

 

[duckface]

I have a four to four ratio right now and thing are not going well. I have three mallard drakes and one pekin drake and two of my mallard drakes are trying to kill the third one. They've almost succeeded once. Now I have to play musical ducks all day long to make sure he is not anywhere near them as they are on a mission. I've been trying to rehome these two with no luck. I'm so frustrated with those two I'm about ready to have a duck roast.

 

[Squirtchy2009]

I try to stick to at least 3 females for every one drake, but you can always have more females if you wish

 

[sparkles2307]

somehow we are really lucky with our 4 drake to 3 duck ratio so far...but have decided which 3 drakes to butcher now much to DS dismay....ducks are his favorite animal...but he knows we eat what we raise so he is working thru it...doing well for a 5 yr old. None of our drakes are fighting or beating up the ducks...I'm impressed.

 

[kingmt]

I have already gotten rid of two drakes & know more had to go but I don't want to get rid of to many. I was thinking of keeping three drakes right now. Just in case something happened to one I would still have enough to keep fertile eggs.

I don't have a problem with getting rid of them because I am glad to eat them. I just want to make every egg count because they cost so much to buy & I have such a small flock.

 

[headred]

I recently re-homed my one roeun drake. I wasn't wanting any fertilized eggs so I decided my girls would be better off not being jumped on all day. They are very happy these days and the backyard is a very peaceful place! I had 1 drake to 5 females. He was busy all day long!

 

[1-duckling]

With my runner flocks I've been quite successful every year with 1 drake per 5 hens. Had 41 naturally hatched ducklings from the fawn and white flock this year. So no fertility problem with this ratio.

 

[shelleyd2008]

If you have a small flock, it is okay to keep a 1:1 ratio if they have sufficient space. Mine have the run of 10+ acres and the poor ducks still look bad.

I think I had a bit higher drake to duck ratio, probably more like 2:1. But you only need 1 drake for that many ducks, I would keep 2 just in case. Truthfully, I'd probably keep them all, and just get more ducks, but I'm funny like that

 

[kingmt]

Quote:
I plan to hatch more but I'm sure more males will hatch with them (I haven't learned to sex an egg yet). I have 2 acres they can run but they stay on less then a acre. my ducks ack like most talk about there Cornish x Rocks. The drakes are getting very aggressive to each other though. So I will probably take the drake count down to two. Right now only one keeps getting shoved around harshly the rrest of the picking is them just acting like ducks.