I just caught one of my muscovy drakes flying

[conny63malies]

Well call it falling with style. They are too big and heavy to lift up from he ground so i thought they are safe and cant take off and i wont have to clip them. Was i wrong. One of them (Goose) hops up the stairs to the back door and likes to sit the there. This morning while walking the puppy he was sitting again all sudden he lifted his wings , made a jump and took off. he got almost twenty feet and stopped at a fence post in the middle of my yard(dont ask me why its there) I guess i now will clip them and fence the stairs off, which we dont we use anyways.

 

[waterfowlrescue]

I have done many scovy rescues and the males can and do fly great distances when they want too.

 

[swampducks]

How old are they? Mine are 2 months and as far as I can tell they haven't tried. It took them nearly that long to find the pond. Maybe mine aren't too bright?

 

[conny63malies]

They are 3 - 3.5 month old, correct me if i am wrong Brenda. I dont a have pond but they are just fine without it. Not sure how bright mine are but i see them outside instead of their shelter during rain storms and the middle of the night on a regular basis

 

[waterfowlrescue]

They mature much more slowly that other ducks. They are also lazy birds and wont fly unless they have too. They are hardy and reproduce generally failry well. We did a rescue a couple weekends ago with no pond and the scovys had reproduced and even with predators there was 50 of them. So they can do quite well perching in trees and sitting on roofs etc to stay away from predators. They are perching ducks after all. They are also native to tropical climates and dont generally have acess to ponds in their native habitat. So they dont bathe and preen as much as other ducks and arent as interested in ponds, they are nice to have but not necessary.

 

[Pupsnpullets]

We used to have them as kids and my mother would get furious with them. They would attempt to fly and crash land in the freshly laundered sheets she had hanging on the line

I thought it was funny then but I can commiserate now!

 

[conny63malies]

Quote:
we had them too when i was a kid, that is what brought me back to them, well and of course the fact that they are quiet. So far i only have three males two of which will be dinner while the third will be a breeder. I got one more set of eggs coming and hopefully nothing happens this time. Otherwise i will go to the auction see if there are some.