Help Sexing Muscovy Ducks (4+ months?)

[Raissa]

Hello,

This is my first time posting, so please let me know if this should go elsewhere. My husband and I recently began raising ducks. We chose Muscovy ducks primarily to avoid annoying our neighbors, but I couldn't resist buying a handful of Cayuga ducklings, too. We know the genders on two of the five for certain, we're fairly sure about Steel (very dark-colored), but we keep going back and forth about the chocolates. There's a light and a dark patterned. If anyone could help us with the chocolates, we'd really appreciate it.


Light chocolate on left, mixed chocolate in the middle, our drake in the back


Chocolate and Steel (who we're pretty certain is female)












His Royal Highness, the King Drake




Queen B, Her Royal Highness, sitting on her clutch of 14 eggs while our Cayuga ducklings avoid annoying her for ten minutes.

Thanks, and Happy New Year!

 

[Bridebeliever]

Unfortunately I can't help with the sex of your duck but I wanted to pop in and say...

 

[jofanx]

They all look like females (other than the one you're sure is a drake) to me since I don't really see any of them being much bigger nor do they have the "excessive" caruncling (and at this age the males should already have them). Also, the males really only hiss while the girls twitter so just listen to them for a while. Hope that helps!

 

[Raissa]

Thank you both very much!

 

[DRaeMc]

You can tell what sexes they are by their size at 8 weeks of age. At 8 weeks the boys will be almost twice the size of the females. It's really like one day they are all the same size and you go out to check on them and the boys look like they are on steroids. Muscovies are really easy to tell because the boys are HUGE, and as they continue to grow their caruncle will deepen and grow out further than the females. The females barely have one, and are more pinkish than red like the boys. As long as all of yours are the same age and are different sizes then you know what you have.