I have a 17 week old Aylesbury an 11 week old runner duck and 2 11 week old Cayugas. I hatched and raised them myself and handled them regularly and they all loved lots of cuddles, and would crowd around me in the morning until I threw them peas in their pool. Now however they act like I'm a stranger to the point where one of the Cayugas runs around the garden screaming like she's scared for her life if I so much as look in her direction. I've tried everything I even got a duck diaper so I could have a bit of alone time with each of them indoors in the hope they would like me again. It didn't help. I still try everyday, the two Cayugas in particular absolutely hate me if I pick them up they bite me. I try to go out when they are calm and offer treats from a distance and I try to handle as little as possible at the moment as they don't seem to be able to handle physical contact but I'm at a loss of what to try for the best. Even my Button quail are more friendly with me. Is it just a phase or will they be like this forever? Any suggestions or advice? Thanks in advance
oh, I felt bad when my runners started acting like I was an axe murderer. They were three weeks old at the time. It took a while, some good advice from Duckyfromoz and stumbling across an article about how runners hate to feel cornered, but I began to work on a strategy to help things improve. It took three, maybe four weeks, but we got back to good terms. Can you think about anything that may have changed? One possibility is that while you were not around, a human may have scared the wits out of them. They may now associate humans with scary feelings. I have found that with all my long hours of working with the ducks as they were growing up, they are friendly to people in general, not just me. So I am thinking the inverse may be true - that they generalize the good and the bad. I have heard of ducks panicking around their people after a run-in with predators. Have any predators raided the flock? Or, perhaps, tried? Those are my thoughts. I think patience, not pushing, but continuing to offer treats and just to be somewhere around them, at first not too near, to begin to restore the relationship.
I'm afraid that they have figured out that they are ducks not people. They are teenagers. They will eventuyally regain their brains.
Well turns out I'm a liar I was just sat in the kitchen with the back door open shelling peas for dinner and suddenly 4 little duckies decided to come inside and mug me for them So happy it looks like my babies might love me again I was really worried when you asked had anything had happened and afraid my new and extremely rude neighbours decided to throw yet another of what were becoming their weekly parties. This time they were out in the garden screaming and shouting like idiots,the ducks had only been outside at night-time for about a week when this happened. I was stood at the window trying to get my babies back off to sleep for about the 5th time that night and I saw a group of lads leaning over the fence to were my duck house is turns out they were blowing smoke in trying to get the ducks stoned and pouring beer through the mesh into their water I brought them inside and they spent the night in an old dog crate that they'd been sleeping in before they moved to their big duckie house. As my husband was working away and I was on my own I left it till the next day to confront them about it, as it happened both sets of their parents were round for a family bbq, they're only a young couple and the parents seemed extremely shocked when I voiced my complaints about what had been happening especially as she works in the local hospital crèche and could lose her job if the police were involved. Since then the parties have stopped completely they gave me a million apologies and what must have been an extremely expensive bouquet of flowers and they paid for a new duck house which is now on the other side of the garden next to my other neighbour who has some manners and common decency.Needless to say were in the process of moving now hopefully somewhere a bit more rural. It probably was around that time when they started becoming withdrawn but as it was an isolated incident I didn't really put two and two together.Hopefully with today's little breakthrough I might have my babies back soon If only the peas would work with my two eldest children who seem to be heading the same way
