I have killer ducks!!

[sourland]

M.Kitchengirl, being a chef you'd think that drake would be in the oven... lol. This is the first bad behavior my runners have ever showed towards any chicken let alone chicks. Right now it's as if they are on speed or something. They are just buzzing around the yard and in the woods where it rained enough to make small pools. Works for me but they must be eating something that is making them go crazy...... lol. I wonder if there is duck crack in the woods that I don't know about. Usually they stay to themselves.

These ducks are too small for the oven...... lol. Wouldn't have enough meat on them at all. I'm hoping it's a spring thing. I've just never saw them act like this and wondered if anyone else had this problem. So far the hen and chicks are safe from those mean ducks. The geese don't bother them and neither does any of the other birds. Poor Weebles has to stay in a pen to be safe. Maybe when Spring ends all will be well with the bird world again.

Plain and simple - TESTOSTERONE POISONING!

 

[ElizabethinNY]

Ugh, mine have testosterone poisoning, too. I have to keep separating one of my Mallard males away from his brothers because he is just RELENTLESS and beats them up. It's getting very old. Please, someone, tell me it will get better when breeding season is over.

 

[Mike Winters]

probably July, august. they chill out right now they are so high on testosterone they will err "mate and fight anything" until then. groups of males seem to have a black and white difference in breeding strategies and attitude then a single male with a couple females.

 

[m.kitchengirl]

Quote: I was starting to think he would have to end up on my rotisserie too, and I was dreading it. I have to run the yard on my own - my sweetheart wants very little to do with my hobby, and that is fine - and I had no interest in killing a named pet in the side yard on a sunny afternoon. Been there, done that. I am glad I know HOW it is done, but I will wait until there are no local farmers raising beautiful ducks & keep baking up a storm with all my duck eggs.

I started out only wanting girl ducks. In the chaos of picking up my first 3 ducklings I ended up with 2 boys. It is hard for me to give up on an animal once I take on the responsibility of raising them, and I wound up trying to make it work. My drake charmed me into giving him a shot.

I had a sense he was after my chickens in a less than G rated way one day & sat there watching him. Then, he tried it, mounting my EE hen in the backyard.
I started to range them separately, and he became increasingly angry when he couldn't get to the chickens.
One day I came home & he had found a way through the fence & was chasing my Wyandotte. He grabbed her by the chest & started to drag her into the bushes. I got to him, and scared him off & went to lure the chickens back into the coop so I could contain the drake & fix the fence. As I escorted the girls down the hill he came FLYING down the hill - he'd never so much as gotten an inch off the ground before - and landed on top of my Wyandotte & started brutalizing her, right on top of my foot. I grabbed him & tossed him in his duck house where he proceeded to thrash about & throw himself at the hardware cloth trying to get out the entire time I wrote his Craigslist ad.

He is a good boy now, with 12 more ducks than he had before & is not causing problems at all - probably too worn out - at his new home. My girls started laying the next day, and haven't stopped. Honestly, I think he was stressing them out, too.

Good luck with your boys. Everyone told me to add more girls & I was waiting for my order of ducklings, but he was gonna kill a chicken & sometimes you have to do what is best for all, not just one.

 

[crj]

The ducks and the chickens really don't intermingle. The ducks are off doing there thing and will pass by the chickens as if they aren't there. Once in a while a chicken will run a duck off but normally they give each other space. That's why I was so shocked to see those duck in the coop. So out of place. Yep, must be some wild mushrooms out there or nuts.

 

[crj]

I was starting to think he would have to end up on my rotisserie too, and I was dreading it. I have to run the yard on my own - my sweetheart wants very little to do with my hobby, and that is fine - and I had no interest in killing a named pet in the side yard on a sunny afternoon. Been there, done that. I am glad I know HOW it is done, but I will wait until there are no local farmers raising beautiful ducks & keep baking up a storm with all my duck eggs.

I started out only wanting girl ducks. In the chaos of picking up my first 3 ducklings I ended up with 2 boys. It is hard for me to give up on an animal once I take on the responsibility of raising them, and I wound up trying to make it work. My drake charmed me into giving him a shot.

I had a sense he was after my chickens in a less than G rated way one day & sat there watching him. Then, he tried it, mounting my EE hen in the backyard.
I started to range them separately, and he became increasingly angry when he couldn't get to the chickens.
One day I came home & he had found a way through the fence & was chasing my Wyandotte. He grabbed her by the chest & started to drag her into the bushes. I got to him, and scared him off & went to lure the chickens back into the coop so I could contain the drake & fix the fence. As I escorted the girls down the hill he came FLYING down the hill - he'd never so much as gotten an inch off the ground before - and landed on top of my Wyandotte & started brutalizing her, right on top of my foot. I grabbed him & tossed him in his duck house where he proceeded to thrash about & throw himself at the hardware cloth trying to get out the entire time I wrote his Craigslist ad.

He is a good boy now, with 12 more ducks than he had before & is not causing problems at all - probably too worn out - at his new home. My girls started laying the next day, and haven't stopped. Honestly, I think he was stressing them out, too.

Good luck with your boys. Everyone told me to add more girls & I was waiting for my order of ducklings, but he was gonna kill a chicken & sometimes you have to do what is best for all, not just one.

Oh yeah, you definitely had a testosterone problem for sure. Glad he's happy at his new place. I've done that myself. I had 2 Pekin brothers and knew once spring came they would be unbearable so I gave them to a friend of mine who has nothing but drakes...... lol. Just how it ended up. She had some female mallards but the flew away each year. I'm beginning to understand why. So, the boys are happy and get a long great with her ducks.

Since penning the mama hen and the babies all is just fine. I have caught a duck looking at the family and then he runs off. Maybe looking for a way in or wishing he had a family. Who knows what's going on in that fowl brain.

 

[MotherGoose 777]

I had a runner drake who found out my goslings were afraid of him, and he would always chase them after that. Even when they grew up, and for the longest time the geese would still run away from him and cry. He had the upper hand and he knew it. He was (aggressive?) to people too. If you held your leg out and shook it at him, he took that as some sort of challenge and would try to sneak up behind you and bite you. Fortunately he couldn't bite hard enough to make any impact, or else he wasn't really trying. He never did settle down though. He spent a LOT of time in "lock-up" for his bad behavior. For whatever reason, he never did fixate on my chickens, and I was glad for that. I ended up with two ducks and two drakes, so it could have been a problem.