Ducklings biting wing feathers off

[KCNC06]

I understand. I'm terrible at estimating units of measurement. I probably turn my turn signal on way before 100' because I don't know how far 100' is.

The fenced area that's their yard is difficult to take pictures of, well not exactly that. The fence is hard to see even in person. It disappears into the background (woods). It's .15 acre I think. The perimeter is about 310' right now. Another 100' or so of fence could probably bump it up to .25 acre. I've read that the recommended minimum run space for ducks is 15 sq ft per duck. Based on that, 5775 sq ft should be plenty of space. With our current chickens and ducks, if I'm mathing right, this should be more 100 sq ft/bird. And since I'm still hoping to bring some of the new ducks to my parents farm, the current pen area should give them well over 100 sq ft/bird. That kind of sounds like it should be a decent amount of space. I realize I'll still have issues if my drake to duck ratio is way off but I don't get the impression that overall pen size would really resolve that.

 

[Miss Lydia]

Sounds good. And your right drakes can be a handful especially if you have more than one, when we had more than one drake we actually made stall inside their coop for the boys. That kept the peace over night. They had to have top put on them because we had Muscovy and if they can't fly they will climb their way our and over. But it worked great for over night. Now I have 2 drakes sleeping over night in one coop and 2 separate breeds and never any problems out of them 2. They just ignore each other. Wouldn't be that way if it was 2 Muscovy Or maybe even 2 Runner drakes haven't gotten that far yet. My Youngest Runner has 3 females and isn't mating yet. They also have their own house.

 

[KCNC06]

We've had multiple drakes before and they got along fine but maybe it's a breed thing. When we had mallards we ended up with a 1:1 ratio, and no fighting at all between the drakes. Then we ended up with 2 black swedish drakes and 1 Pekin duck, again no issues with the drakes. Then this spring we had a mallard drake, the White Layer drake and 3 white layer ducks, all got along great until something ate the mallard's head. Our other group has 2 drakes and 4 ducks and I've never noticed the drakes having any issues. I guess we've been really lucky so far. The only time we've had boys not get along was when we ended up with 5 drakes and no ducks. THAT was bad times!
We're going to have at least 3 separate houses for the ducks so I should be able to divide up the boys overnight if they need distance. And I think we're aiming for at least 8'x10' for this next house so I should be able to make stalls if we need to.

 

[Miss Lydia]

Good plan and since we never know it’s always best to have that plan thought through. I hope this time it works out that if you have multiple drakes they all do well together. My main worry is the females I don’t want my girls overly mated I will probably keep my Muscovy flock separated most of the time from my Runners once spring comes round next year they are an older group and don’t need the harassment of the 2 young Runner drakes. My Muscovy drake has no interest in the Runners or Buff females. Always a plan B right lol. You should be seeing signs now of what sexes you have?

 

[KCNC06]

I'm not sure why but I'm not feeling super confident in my ability to hear the difference in their voices lately. Some have the obvious, raspy boy voice. It's the ones that are getting louder and I think they're quacking...that probably do sound like girls, I'm just not willing to count my girls as girls yet for some reason. The first 8 White Layers, I felt really confident hearing the difference in their voices by around 6 weeks. Pretty sure my lack of confidence on the voices now has more to do with the number of babies. I don't think I'm quite ready to get my hopes up on having a decent number of girls. I'm quite sure 4 of our first 8 were boys, then with the next...however many came next, they sounded like less than half were boys. This last group, I just don't know. I'm not sure if the breeds might mature slightly slower than White Layers (the White Layer ducklings definitely got bigger faster), or if I just have a mental block, or if they're really all boys. I'm pretty sure it's a mental block though. Considering Bill Bill is now...almost 2 months old, no matter how hard I listen I've never heard a raspy voice from him, and I still insist on calling "him" a him.

 

[KCNC06]

Now that I think about it, I bet my hesitancy to call any girls has to do with last year's fiasco with my chicks. The only straight run chicks I bought were bantams, out of 5 we got one pullet (much better than previous years!). The rest of the chicks were sexed, all pullets. Or so I was told. I don't remember how many we bought but a good 50% of my "pullet" chicks grew up to be roosters.
With this last bunch of ducklings though, I'm pretty confident that one of the biters is a boy. He's a Cayuga Rouen mix. Absolutely beautiful in my opinion, but rude with that biting. The other biter was Mr. Snuggies. He's a White Layer and, if I was forced to guess, I'd say he sounds a lot more like a girl than a boy. We have another WL, Humpty Dumpty, who hatched shortly before Mr. Snuggies and Humpty Dumpty has the typical raspy boy voice. Mr. Snuggies is just loud and quacky.