I'm about ready to strangle some Muscovy's!!

[TennesseeTruly]

My Muscovy babies are now 2 months old. All 5 are outside and have 4 new girlfriends compliments of 17roses. It turned out that we had 3 males and 2 females. Okay so a little male heavy, with the 4 new girls, we should be okay.

Well even before we got the new girls I had a problem. My Muscovy's are attacking one another! And its not male on male or male on female, its a freaking free for all!!

I just had to remove my largest male, Vali, from the pen because my blue boy and my one black & white girl began attacking him and eating the area where their wing feathers are coming in. They had him bloodied, just like the other two I had to remove from the pen. And this time, the 4 new girls were in on it too!

Thank goodness for my Runners, who are such sweet babies, because we had to put the 3 that were getting eaten, literally, over in the pen with them for the time being. They get a good diet, they're on Mazuri Waterfowl Maintence. I added cat food to it because someone suggested that maybe they needed some more protein. Well that's not working!

They have a nicely grassed area, get kale and collards daily, occasional scrambled eggs, brown rice & beans, and whatever the parrots are eating. I don't know what the heck to do about this.

Any ideas??

~Laurie~

 

[Bleenie]

They're just growing in their pin flight feathers right? I have had some ducks that will bite & pull the others pin feathers and i think it's just because they are weird looking and theyre not used to it. if theyre blooding eachother up you should seperate them until the feathers start coming out and see if they still do it, maybe they just have attitudes? (someone else recently posted about this too & there might be better replies there)

i have had adult girls attack eachother before but usually only when they get scared or are in a bad mood. for example, one of the cows was right next to their pen and turned and mooed right at a couple ducks and Everyone went off! jumping, pecking, yanking and being mean to all, it was amusing for a second until Sid flew into the wire and fell like a rock to the ground, lol. I also have 1 chocolate hen(i think) that's always yanking at the girls like shes trying to mate but then other times she'll be sitting liek shes gonna lay an egg...she's a weird one for sure.

 

[TennesseeTruly]

Yup, its the pin feathers they're tearing apart. My poor babies look like hell! I feel so badly for them. They're feathering in so slowly! They grew like monsters, fast! But their feathers are so slow to come in. UGH!

And its only the Muscovy's that are picking on them. I have the "victims" in with some Runners, a Pekin, and a Cayuga. None of them are picking on them. The Scovy's are little bloodsuckers!

Hopefully their feathers will come in quickly and I can add those three back to their own flock.

Thanks Bleenie. You're a great help, hun...again!

HUGSSSSSSSS

Laurie