Help with drake/female ratio

Kferg327

In the Brooder
Feb 11, 2023
7
9
11
Hello all! I am new here but need some advice on my flock.
I currently have 10 ducks ( 3 females, 7 males)
Yes I know the ratio is WAY off so looking to downsize for sure! 8 of those are babies from last spring that my mated pair had.
My dilemma is this….I want to keep the mated pair ( mom and dad) and obviously the two female babies but I would need to add some more females to the flock or get rid of ALL thr other males. Ideally I was thinking of keeping just 1-2 of the drake babies. Currently I have all 6 of the young drakes in duck jail and the 3 females and 1 older male out free roaming on our pond. Until I decide who goes and stays that’s what I have to do.
I also was considering maybe getting a few more females and then keep the 1-2 males…
Decisions, decisions!! 🤪
Thoughts???
 
Hello all! I am new here but need some advice on my flock.
I currently have 10 ducks ( 3 females, 7 males)
Yes I know the ratio is WAY off so looking to downsize for sure! 8 of those are babies from last spring that my mated pair had.
My dilemma is this….I want to keep the mated pair ( mom and dad) and obviously the two female babies but I would need to add some more females to the flock or get rid of ALL thr other males. Ideally I was thinking of keeping just 1-2 of the drake babies. Currently I have all 6 of the young drakes in duck jail and the 3 females and 1 older male out free roaming on our pond. Until I decide who goes and stays that’s what I have to do.
I also was considering maybe getting a few more females and then keep the 1-2 males…
Decisions, decisions!! 🤪
Thoughts???
You could keep the mother and father, and the additional females, maybe 1 more male. The only thing about having them together is the Father and his son may have dominance issues, and then maybe the issue of inbreeding with your ducks. If you kept the Mother Father pair and then the two females, you could get a drake from a different breeder, and sell the rest of your drakes.
Or keep them in a Bachelor Group away from the Females.
I personally would keep the 3 females, the older male, and then have 2 of the males in a bachelor group( One for breeding and one for company).
And then at some point buy 3 or 4 females for the male(s). That would reduce risk of inbreeding, and let me keep some of my original Juvenile Drakes.
You could also keep your set up as it is but downsize the Bachelor group from 6 to 3 then get 6 Females and keep the Mother, Father, Daughter pair and Bachelor pair away from each other.
Im not sure if this was any help but let me know how it goes.
 
those are a lot of good suggestions! Thank you! That is another reason I locked all the younger boys away is they were ganging up on poor mom 🫤
 
Mom can mate with sons and dad with daughters just not siblings is what everyone suggests
I run my flock this way to be sure but honestly I don’t think ducks in the wild ask if your my sister before they mate and groups born together tend to stick together
I have 16 ducks ( 11 female 5 drakes )
My ratios are slightly off but I keep rotation with the drakes in high mate season but keep my mom and dad together as she hates all the other drakes and only wants to be with him
It was only those two for awhile so they bonded
You could add 2-4 girls per drake you keep
 
Your situation sounds similar to how I started out. My original pair hatched 9 ducklings but only 4 were female. I kept them and 4 of the males ended up in my freezer. I lost 2 females to a fox. I ended up buying 4 more females and trading my young male for another male. Anyway now I have a flock of 10 with 8 females to 2 males. Everything works out well until mating/breeding season so for 6 months of the year I have 2 coops with 2 runs, 1 drake and 4 females in each. Sorry - that was a long winded way of saying you probably need to get more females and remove most males keeping only 1 or 2.
Mom can mate with sons and dad with daughters just not siblings is what everyone suggests
My ducks really don't care what the family relationship is in terms of mating behaviour. I don't worry about it but I am selling eggs, not looking to hatch.
 
Ahh gotcha! All good info! I honestly did not take into consideration that it might matter mating wise….I suppose I assumed being a newbie that parents and children didn’t mate but I guess that was a duh thing for me 🤪 I have been watching them all when they were all together and took note that their was some mating attempts between siblings but mostly it was the young males going after mom….poor mom 😬 and now that they are separated ( dad+mom+ two females) there is mating attempts between dad and daughter.
But honestly when I got my original batch years ago (mom and dad are all that’s left of that original batch) I think they were all siblings 🤷‍♀️
I have a HUGE back yard pond ( 3500 feet atleast) so I originally got ducks years ago, not knowing a thing about them and just turned them loose…started out with 10 about 4 years ago and dwindled to 2…but when mama finally hatched out some babies this past year I thought heck maybe I should learn some duck skills and actually keep these ones alive 🫤. I took all the babies from her and raised them so they wouldn’t be eaten by predators then eventually let them go. I built this really nice pen to lock everyone in at night and that worked for a few months then teen rebellion hit with the young ones and they were like…nahh we don’t want to go in at night. So they go in spurts on whether they are locked up at night…so far I have only lost one but I can only do what I can do.
Sorry long post but basically I don’t want to have to divide anyone up once I get my ration right…I just want them to have free rein during the day.
Some pics of my waddles….mom and dad are in the second two with ducklings, dad is pic #4, and pic # 5 shows the amount of wild duck visitors I get as well
B076AF08-CBA3-4AF5-B731-2EFF01EEDA25.jpeg
50C3A82B-440D-4F11-91F2-6F77726E5D44.jpeg
4FD9CB94-731E-49BC-9CD9-DDF4680F205F.jpeg
9863BDB8-1E96-4042-86F8-465D98B48943.jpeg
76EEB3E6-B53B-4870-8082-BFBABA851BA5.jpeg
4286595F-64E1-4E47-A917-6C8A9805223C.jpeg
 
Ahh gotcha! All good info! I honestly did not take into consideration that it might matter mating wise….I suppose I assumed being a newbie that parents and children didn’t mate but I guess that was a duh thing for me 🤪 I have been watching them all when they were all together and took note that their was some mating attempts between siblings but mostly it was the young males going after mom….poor mom 😬 and now that they are separated ( dad+mom+ two females) there is mating attempts between dad and daughter.
But honestly when I got my original batch years ago (mom and dad are all that’s left of that original batch) I think they were all siblings 🤷‍♀️
I have a HUGE back yard pond ( 3500 feet atleast) so I originally got ducks years ago, not knowing a thing about them and just turned them loose…started out with 10 about 4 years ago and dwindled to 2…but when mama finally hatched out some babies this past year I thought heck maybe I should learn some duck skills and actually keep these ones alive 🫤. I took all the babies from her and raised them so they wouldn’t be eaten by predators then eventually let them go. I built this really nice pen to lock everyone in at night and that worked for a few months then teen rebellion hit with the young ones and they were like…nahh we don’t want to go in at night. So they go in spurts on whether they are locked up at night…so far I have only lost one but I can only do what I can do.
Sorry long post but basically I don’t want to have to divide anyone up once I get my ration right…I just want them to have free rein during the day.
Some pics of my waddles….mom and dad are in the second two with ducklings, dad is pic #4, and pic # 5 shows the amount of wild duck visitors I get as well View attachment 3402472View attachment 3402473View attachment 3402474View attachment 3402475View attachment 3402476View attachment 3402477
Beautiful Ducks!!!!
 
Thank you! From the variety of babies I got I know mom and dad are probably a mixed breed variety but it makes it interesting!
 
So as an update to this I have since gotten rid of all the drakes except dad and one son….I contemplated for some time after keeping all the boys locked if I was going to keep 1 or not. But I did end up keeping one of the more docile males, lower in the pecking order.
BUT now my problem is dad has assumed all girls for himself ( 3 hens) and spends his day chasing the other drake away. Luckily I have a lot of area where they can get away from each other but the young drake is gluten for punishment and won’t let it be…..so I have found 3 females to add to our flock that are currently in quarantine as I just got them yesterday. I am hoping this evens things out or am I wishful thinking??!!
 

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