Ducks hate me

[AlohaDuck]

Here's something you can try. It's worked for me every time. When you hold them in your hand, with both hands cup them in, mimicking a shell. They calm right down and you'll notice them falling asleep. Then after a little while slowly widen an opening and talk to them very sweet. It seems far out there, but my theory is that when they are super young, it's almost like they think they are in a shell, a form of security? Who knows, but like I've said, it has worked wonders for me and all my ducks love me.

If they are super scared, that to me screams wild instincts, which is natural. Remember ducks imprint pretty quick so if they were hatched and saw their mother duck right off the bat and am used to being with her, that is what is imbedded in their head. The only way to go matrix (movie) on her (in resetting their memory in a sense) is to spend as much time with them as you can. Think like a duck. Sounds weird I know, but once you've raised a few you'll know what it takes...


BarnChickyOO, Bread? Ouch....

 

[duckfanatic01]

Here's something you can try. It's worked for me every time. When you hold them in your hand, with both hands cup them in...

Yeah I used to do that when they were little and it worked great, but now they're going through what I call "the rebellious teenage duck stage" by running away from me and acting scared when I come near them, but once I get them on my lap, they'll calm down and start to rest. Another thing that helps is giving them tomatoes(which I don't like at all personally), grapes, strawberries, all kinds of fruits and vegetables and they'll be a little nicer to you if you have that stuff in your hand at the time. Sometimes that doesn't seem to help, but it work little by little.
So yeah I say just spend lots of time with them and be as nice as you can to them, and they'll warm up to you eventually.

 

[toowoombapekins]

yeah don't stress
we got our 2 pekins when they were a few days old. We nursed them had them sitting on our shoulder, they'd snuggle into our neck. They'd 'peep peep peep' everytime we left them alone.

After about 2 weeks they turned off us- they didn't want anything to do with us. Run away & hide. squeal everytime we went near them, we also likened it to us feeling like they thought we were going to stick them in the oven! We were kind of devastated that they seemed to view as foe rather than friend....

This went on for a month or two, but we persisted with them, slowly winning them over with treats (peas). We stopped trying to handle them for a while as well, which seemed to build their trust. Gradually we started sneaking a pat in when we hand fed them peas.

Now they are adults, they are very fond of attention. They eat out of our hands, follow us around. They still aren't overly fussed about being touched if we initiate it, but they will come up to us all the time, run after us if we walk away. They love nibbling on our toes and legs, chewing on ears if we get down low enough lol. We can pick them up now and hold them. They will run off at first when we try to pick them up, but once we've picked them up they settle and make a funny quiet, subdued honking noise (like a ducks equivalent of a cat purring!) while we pat and talk to them. I think they like to pretend they aren't interested, but I think they actually enjoy it It took some time to get to this stage, you just have to persist through all the noisy protesting. It's to the point now that when they hear either myself or g/f come home in the afternoon or get up in the morning, they will make one hell of a noise until we head out the backyard and let them out of their house to play with us. We have to sneak around the house if we haven't got time to visit them before going to work lol