Hey all, I'm new to the forums - hoping I can get some advice!! We've got 4 Muscovy ducks and 2 Embden geese, all females. We recently moved to our new farm in the mountains, and at first the birds were adjusting nicely. We kept them in their enclosure for the first 2 weeks to make sure they were used to their new surroundings before letting them out to forage. While they were in the enclosure, one duck started to become a bit of an outcast.. her caruncles got very pale and I could tell she was getting picked on. I came in one day and she had a foamy eye and it looked like her face had been pecked at by the other ducks. I read that the pale caruncles were most likely due to anemia from lack of foraging, and that the foamy eye was from a lack of bathing which makes sense- the other ducks were nice and clean but it looked like she had not been cleaning herself properly. I let them out to forage and set up a new pond in their enclosure, and the problem went away - her caruncles got colour again, her eye stopped foaming and was fine, she was bathing herself and keeping clean again. She had a scabbed area on the side of her face where she had been pecked, but it was healing nicely and she was keeping it clean and interacting with the other birds just fine, so I wasn't too worried about it though I kept my eye on her. Fast forward a few weeks, the temperature has dropped dramatically from a happy 7-9 degrees C to about -15. I came out the morning after the temperature dropped to find their water and pond all frozen solid, and our injured girl with a torn up face again. I changed all their water and replaced it with luke warm, she came and cleaned her face right away but didn't bathe herself, and to be honest, I'm not surprised. It's cold and very, very windy and her feathers are patchy from where the other ducks have been pulling at them, I feel like if she had a bath she might get frostbite/hypothermia. I have been changing their water constantly, but we don't have power out to their house yet so we don't have a way of keeping the water from freezing over night. When I came out this morning, her face was much worse, but she is nestled with the other ducks in their shelter and keeping out of the wind. I am going to quarantine her, and wash her face with a saline solution to keep it from getting infected. I want to give her the opportunity to bathe, but I am worried about her being exposed to the cold/wind and apart from the enclosure with the other birds, we don't have too many areas for her to be warm and out of the wind, although we can certainly construct one just for her. Has anyone been in a situation like this before? Any and all suggestions and help would be greatly appreciated. I'm very worried about her! We have kept Muscovy ducks for almost 3 years now and have never run in to a problem like this before. Thanks for any help.
Wow! That is terrible! Unfortunately I have no hints. Maybe you need to keep them separated, or could it be that you just need two feeders and two waterers?
Sounds really sad and I think birds really dinosaurs sometimes not too nice! Others are very sweet. I do want to ask you because a chicken that I had that was picked on had some type of defect. I don't know if it was more mental or what............or she was part blind but nobody wanted her around except the oldest chicken who didn't get fazed by anything. She would fight the dogs but not the chickens! Do you notice something wrong with this duck? Nature is an interesting thing!
Definitely going to keep her separated until she is improving! I think ducks can be quite mean to a member of the flock that is ill, as when she is healthy they leave her alone. SpanishChick- She is one of three birds we got as chicks in the summer, so is around 7 or 8 months old now, and showed no noticeable defects until this problem surfaced. I'm thinking she took the move worse than the others, we live a good 1200ft higher than our last home, which was by the beach, so the environment is very different. I'm hoping some space and TLC will help her out, I'll post an update if anything changes. Thanks for the replies!
