Ok I have a HUGE problem. I had an awesome hatch rate. I have 14 ducklings that are now about 6 weeks old. No obvious problems at birth. All very active right out of the shell. Hyper even. They were in an indoor brooder for the first week and a half. After that they were moved to an outdoor tractor with heat lamp. When they went outside no leg problems. Everyone looked great. In the last week we have started to notice a couple walking on their hocks and all the ducks hocks are huge. More and more of them are now walking on their hocks. Most are looking sorta pigeon toed. All have huge joints. When giving a bath today we noticed they all have twits to their wings. Its not super obvious yet but it looks like we might have major problems.
I just hatched 10 more, not knowing we had problems and I have 15 more in the incubator. I am not sure if I should be scrapping what is in the incubator. Seems cruel but so is having major defects.
So here is what they eat. They do not free range but get plenty of grasses and clover. They get a waterfowl grower formula that I got at our local feed store. They get fried eggs not more than once a week and sometimes they get peas or green beans. The parents are given an all purpose poultry feed, they free range, also get eggs once a week, there is free choice ground egg shells for calcium, they also get a chance at all green compost we have from the kitchen.
They are on the grassy ground, not on wire. Their tractor gets moved every other day. Its pretty huge and takes all of us to move it. It was initially made for 8 geese so it was pretty big.
Ideas?
Every single one of the older ones are affected. We have 2 littles that had issues walking which I thought was maybe spraddle leg. They came out of the egg onto wire and had issues immediately at birth. I treated them for spraddle leg and they seem to be fine so far. Of course the others seemed fine also. I was going to sell these. That idea is now scrapped. It looks like we might have a duck processing party and share with family and friends. If this is genetic then probably the parents have to go also. I am very upset right now. It is horrible to watch some of them walk right now. They do not seem to mind but as they get fatter this is going to be an issue.
I just hatched 10 more, not knowing we had problems and I have 15 more in the incubator. I am not sure if I should be scrapping what is in the incubator. Seems cruel but so is having major defects.
So here is what they eat. They do not free range but get plenty of grasses and clover. They get a waterfowl grower formula that I got at our local feed store. They get fried eggs not more than once a week and sometimes they get peas or green beans. The parents are given an all purpose poultry feed, they free range, also get eggs once a week, there is free choice ground egg shells for calcium, they also get a chance at all green compost we have from the kitchen.
They are on the grassy ground, not on wire. Their tractor gets moved every other day. Its pretty huge and takes all of us to move it. It was initially made for 8 geese so it was pretty big.
Ideas?
Every single one of the older ones are affected. We have 2 littles that had issues walking which I thought was maybe spraddle leg. They came out of the egg onto wire and had issues immediately at birth. I treated them for spraddle leg and they seem to be fine so far. Of course the others seemed fine also. I was going to sell these. That idea is now scrapped. It looks like we might have a duck processing party and share with family and friends. If this is genetic then probably the parents have to go also. I am very upset right now. It is horrible to watch some of them walk right now. They do not seem to mind but as they get fatter this is going to be an issue.
