how to get him to stop attacking me!

[quackkquack__]

Yeah I love Buzzard too much to just give him up.
Maybe he'll stop trying to mate with me when I get some new girls

 

[Isadora]

I don't know what to tell you, I can't understand why they aren't mating this is peak hormone season and they should be mating.

I believe the male imprinted on the human. He's a bit confused about who he should be mating at this point

 

[quackkquack__]

I believe the male imprinted on the human. He's a bit confused about who he should be mating at this point

Yeah pretty sure he has imprinted on me since he was a lonely duckling I would hangout with him.
How would I get him to mate with Newt (my female duck)?

 

[Isadora]

Yeah pretty sure he has imprinted on me since he was a lonely duckling I would hangout with him.
How would I get him to mate with Newt (my female duck)?

I don't know of a sure way but if it was my bird I would interact with him as little as possible for a while to see if you could get his attention on the female and off of you.
I would even go so far as to see how much daily maintenance I could do from outside the pen so he can't get at you. I don't know your set up so I'm not sure that's even a possibility.

 

[quackkquack__]

I don't know of a sure way but if it was my bird I would interact with him as little as possible for a while to see if you could get his attention on the female and off of you.
I would even go so far as to see how much daily maintenance I could do from outside the pen so he can't get at you. I don't know your set up so I'm not sure that's even a possibility.

I do have to go in their enclosure to feed them and give them water and check if Newt laid any more eggs but that's all I do since I can't really hangout with them that much without him attacking me (I usually take Newt inside to hangout with her tho lol)

 

[Miss Lydia]

@ruthhope says giving her drake time out in a crate takes care of aggression. I just keep tossing mine in the pool and he will get out and wander off and start preening [for a while] then when I come back out we start again. lol Mine is imprinted on me my runner drake has never acted like this he was raised by a mama duck

 

[ruthhope]

@ruthhope says giving her drake time out in a crate takes care of aggression. I just keep tossing mine in the pool and he will get out and wander off and start preening [for a while] then when I come back out we start again. lol Mine is imprinted on me my runner drake has never acted like this he was raised by a mama duck

I have all drakes and their hormones rise in the spring. They mainly get cranky with each other. I have one muscovy drake that was sweet as a juvenile two years ago, but last year became dangerous -- psychotic even. He would fly at me full frontal with his feet towards me. He frightened me as he took to jumping up on the side gate and I was worried he might get out and attack the toddler over the road. He is completely sweet this year and has only tried to bite me once. That time I dropped him in the kiddie pool as I was busy.

Initially, after researching on BYC how to deal with aggression, I started the holding the boy down to the ground, pressing on his back, until he gave up fighting. I hated doing it and frankly I tired before he did. Plus he was still aggressive. Then he got up on the gate and I cautiously approached him -- my side of the gate was down a step and so he was my height -- with my arms out, thinking I would push him down on the back yard side of the fence. To my amasement, I got right up to him, and put my arms round him and he rested his head on my shoulder. The second time he was on the gate, I was less diffident and went and gave him a long hug. This boy was truly mixed up!!!

So after that, when he started coming up behind and biting my ankles, I picked him up, stood him on a concrete picnic table on our rear patio, and hugged him until he quietened down. Many hugs later and an overall calming of his aggressive behavior, I still had him biting my ankles on occasions -- when I was working on the coop or in the garden. That is when I started time out in a dog crate. It's very time consumming using the hugs approach [well worth it, I think] but I didn't always have the time. So I moved a dog crate onto the patio. He needed to be in the dog crate for only a couple of minutes and he came out subdued. Very occasionally he came straight back to bite me, and then he went back in the dogcrate for 10 minutes. He never needed more than 10 minutes.

The photo is the second time he got on the gate when I was less frightened and able to get out my phone and take a selfie. Note I am not holding him by that time: he is voluntarily standing there with his head on my shoulder. He has only done that once more and also once got up on the grill, when he wanted hugs. He is mainly a stand offish boy, who doesn't like being touched bu comes to eat peas from my hand.

 

[quackkquack__]

Yeah pretty sure he has imprinted on me since he was a lonely duckling I would hangout with him.
How would I get him to mate with Newt (my female duck)?

I wanted to do a quick update on Newt
Pretty sure shes gone broody!!
So the other day it looked like she had a egg ready to lay and I was excited because that'd be her fifth egg but the next day it looked like she had laid one but I looked and looked and found no egg and today shes actually laying in her nest on her eggs! Shes never done that before unless its at night!
I went to go say hi to her and check if she laid another egg (she didn't) and after I left, she tucked her eggs back under her and laid back down.
Still not sure if they are mating but I'm thinking about purchasing some hatching call duck eggs and let her try to hatch some of them if she is broody.

 

[Klutch]

You raised and treated him like a human , what do you think is going though that animals mind. If one of your family member (brother/uncle) would be doing that, what would you call it. You broke him and now you have to fix him

 

[BelovedBirds]

You raised and treated him like a human , what do you think is going though that animals mind. If one of your family member (brother/uncle) would be doing that, what would you call it. You broke him and now you have to fix him

I wouldn't say they "broke" him.
They raised him with a lot of love and care, yes he imprinted, probably before they knew it was a drake and before they knew he would behave this way. Plenty of people don't realise what imprinting does to an animal longterm

Sometimes it ends okay, sometimes it doesn't. I'm sure this is a lesson learned for OP, and they don't need such a harsh response.

Instead of giving them one, how about you explain *how* to "fix" him.