Ducklings Rule

[Myra]

I've been keeping my 5 week old pekins in seperate areas seperated by chicken wire from the two adult pekins (1 year olds) - one male, one female. SO today I thought I'd put the adult female with the 5week olds for a bit - sort of introduction time! Well, it's my 5-week old females that kept running over and "poking" my sweet Sarah causing her much distress. After 1/2 hour of this - I seperated them again. SIlly me - I thought the older female would cause my youngsters distress - not the other way around - never thought the ducklings would "rule"!

 

[chickboss]

Silly ducks! I am going to let my older Kahkis visit the younger ones soon, I can't wait to see how that goes! The older ones seemed very interested when the babies were having yard time close to their yard, but they haven't actually met yet. I hope they'll get along in time because here in a few months they will need to live as a group.

 

[Sweetfolly]

I tried to introduce 10 six-week-old ducklings to a pen that had two Khaki Campbells and a Jumbo Pekin girl in it last year, worrying about the little ones, thinking that the bigger ones would be bullies...

Well, ALL 10 of the little ones started crawling all over the Pekin's back and stomping on her and biting at her, all at once! They were like locusts, and my poor old Pekin just laid there, being trampled! The ducklings definately let her know that they were the new rulers of the duck pen.

Unfortunately, since that experience, my Pekin's been really mean to all the younger ducks I've tried to introduce to her. I tried putting my two-month-old Stanbridge Whites in there a few weeks ago and she started pulling out their wing feathers. She just goes insane, and she's around 14 pounds and really scary. Not to mention that, with her age, breed, and weight, I'm a little worried that all the stress it causes when she goes into her duckling-hating frenzy is going to cause a heart attack or something.

 

[chickboss]

Holly Cow! Little vampire ducklings! LOL, I'll be sure to be really careful, I sure don't want my poor older ones to have phycological damage from deranged babies!