- Aug 26, 2011
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Please opinionate if you feel like it or if you know for a fact! 
Backstory: ordered 4 straight run Cayuga ducks from a hatchery plus life insurance. 3 arrived dead. One week later 3 replacements arrived including one with a bald patch on its head. Over the course of the next few weeks, baldy’s head grew feathers and was the only duckling of the group (added 2 mallard? ducklings Tractor Supply returns) that would “quack” beyond peeps. It sounded like a sad honk but it did it regularly. A predator since killed all but one Cayuga and one mallard (I think snake and we’re working on trapping and killing it). The first one it killed was my biggest one, the lone survivor of the first order, but it got baldy, too. As I’m considering replacements, the shipment week I’m looking at says female and unsexed are “unavailable”. So I’m going to wait a week until unsexed are available again.
So here’s the question: does the hatchery really sex all the ducklings at hatch and mark them (bald spot), and sometimes throw a female in with mostly males in the unsexed orders? On the price list, males are usually cheaper than females, so I wonder if that’s how they stock their unsexed orders with mostly or all males, knowingly.
Hope the question makes sense
for future planning/orders to just cop for the sexed ones so I know what I’m getting (not 90-100% males yanno)
Backstory: ordered 4 straight run Cayuga ducks from a hatchery plus life insurance. 3 arrived dead. One week later 3 replacements arrived including one with a bald patch on its head. Over the course of the next few weeks, baldy’s head grew feathers and was the only duckling of the group (added 2 mallard? ducklings Tractor Supply returns) that would “quack” beyond peeps. It sounded like a sad honk but it did it regularly. A predator since killed all but one Cayuga and one mallard (I think snake and we’re working on trapping and killing it). The first one it killed was my biggest one, the lone survivor of the first order, but it got baldy, too. As I’m considering replacements, the shipment week I’m looking at says female and unsexed are “unavailable”. So I’m going to wait a week until unsexed are available again.
So here’s the question: does the hatchery really sex all the ducklings at hatch and mark them (bald spot), and sometimes throw a female in with mostly males in the unsexed orders? On the price list, males are usually cheaper than females, so I wonder if that’s how they stock their unsexed orders with mostly or all males, knowingly.
Hope the question makes sense
for future planning/orders to just cop for the sexed ones so I know what I’m getting (not 90-100% males yanno)
I tried my luck at that, but the duckies were like 2-3 weeks old and wiggly so I didn’t know what I was looking for.
In my turkey book he mentions a 99.5 degree setting results in more females vs 100 degree more males, but I’d love confirmation/proof/disproof.
