Killer duck......

[Miss Lydia]

I am so sorry. Most likely a weasel or mink members of the same family. I'd make sure your chickens are safe now because it will be after them soon. I am not familiar with the best traps but go to the predator pests forum on here and I am sure you'll get good advise.

 

[Jpat]

weasel ide say

 

[quackiemama]

Thank you everyone for the responses.. all of my ducks are gone. The duck who i thought had been attacking other ducks was found dead by herself. This spring I’ll be patching,filling, securing every hole and small space once the snow is gone.. More chicks and ducks this spring (Once everything is patched up and secure) i just feel like crap because looking back i COULD’VE put the duck in a crate and I should’ve. I just wasn’t thinking..

Anyways,, here are the tracks i’ve found leading to the duck house (i was so oblivious to not even notice)
View attachment 1663250

Yes i know. A weasel could probably fit through those holes..
definitely looks like it has a tail. And two different looking tracks???
View attachment 1663251

We’re thinking it most likely is coming from the brook (we have a brook/meadow in the woods behind the runs) and living underneath the barn
View attachment 1663252

We’ve NEVER had a weasel or a upossum problem with the chickens, especially in the winter. It’s usually the hawks we’re always looking for. Any ideas as to what i should use for a trap or how to catch this thing?? Our old trap broke when we were catching a groundhog in the garden (so much annoying wildlife here lol) And any idea after looking at the tracks what it might be? I’ve heard weasels will kill just to kill. And that looks like the case. The remaining duck had just a chewed neck..

Oh my gosh I am so sorry. I am glad though that it was not a killer duck though. I know these other folks will likely have your answers.

 

[DuckyDonna]

I am so sorry. Most likely a weasel or mink members of the same family. I'd make sure your chickens are safe now because it will be after them soon. I am not familiar with the best traps but go to the predator pests forum on here and I am sure you'll get good advise.

and hardware cloth! Lots of it in every nook and crany of their pen! I just looked up to see if theree are Tractor Supply stores up there and there are. Our store down here has lots of traps for lots of animals so you could try there.

 

[Silkie2]

and hardware cloth! Lots of it in every nook and crany of their pen! I just looked up to see if theree are Tractor Supply stores up there and there are. Our store down here has lots of traps for lots of animals so you could try there.

Yeah I’m probably gonna end up going to TSC

 

[Lynxfire]

So i renamed my khaki cambell duck, Killer. Any guess why? yes.. it killed the other 2 ducks out of my 3 ducks.

I am so sorry for your loss. Hopefully you can get this resolved.

 

[Loopeend]

Thank you everyone for the responses.. all of my ducks are gone. The duck who i thought had been attacking other ducks was found dead by herself. This spring I’ll be patching,filling, securing every hole and small space once the snow is gone.. More chicks and ducks this spring (Once everything is patched up and secure) i just feel like crap because looking back i COULD’VE put the duck in a crate and I should’ve. I just wasn’t thinking..

Anyways,, here are the tracks i’ve found leading to the duck house (i was so oblivious to not even notice)
View attachment 1663250

Yes i know. A weasel could probably fit through those holes..
definitely looks like it has a tail. And two different looking tracks???
View attachment 1663251

We’re thinking it most likely is coming from the brook (we have a brook/meadow in the woods behind the runs) and living underneath the barn
View attachment 1663252

We’ve NEVER had a weasel or a upossum problem with the chickens, especially in the winter. It’s usually the hawks we’re always looking for. Any ideas as to what i should use for a trap or how to catch this thing?? Our old trap broke when we were catching a groundhog in the garden (so much annoying wildlife here lol) And any idea after looking at the tracks what it might be? I’ve heard weasels will kill just to kill. And that looks like the case. The remaining duck had just a chewed neck..

Oh how awfull :'(

 

[Loopeend]

Animals can't track consequences for long periods of time. If a duck is killed, and then, later, you don't give snacks, they don't understand the connection. If you saw her attack another duck and immediately did something like pick her up and throw her, she could understand that. Lack of action is harder, though, especially if it's not a specific action at a specific time. You only give treats sometimes, I assume, so they aren't likely to understand that this particular lack of treats is related to something. Even if you came over and made a specific noise every time there weren't treats, it would take them a long time to learn about that specific connection.
And they aren't whispering to each other to be quiet. They're communicating, but more quietly. That's also a much simpler process, the instinctive urge to be quieter when trying to escape notice.

Even fish know how to pavlov.
Ducks, and other animals, can learn. And they do. They don't have long inner conversations about it like we, humans, do though.
Especially group-animals.

That duck doesn't think about the actions and consequences of her killing a duck. The morals involved. etc. persé.
But it notices that it did something what made her owners not happy; resulting in a behaviour of such owners that is negative for her. Like a less happy morning with no snacks. A whole morning of owners acting way different then normal. And that that does not benefit her. She can link situations. Any animal can.
And she can learn that "acting innocent" can have better chances of having 'a normal morning'.

They are species with a big social structure. With ranks. A strict hierachy. Due to this they are able to adapt/adjust their actions/behaviour.

 

[Fishkeeper]

Pavlov responses require multiple repeats, and consequences have to be immediate or nearly so.

How about all the mornings where the owners didn't feed as many treats due to being distracted, or gone? Is that duck walking around with 20 different things in its little brain that it shouldn't do to get more in order to get more treats?

I sincerely doubt a duck is going to make the link between different behavior in humans, and a specific thing that it did earlier. How would the duck know that it was specifically killing another duck that was the issue, and not, say, being loud, or a car making specific noises?
If you see a duck attack another duck, and you run up, grab the attacker, and throw it, and repeat every time it attacks, that duck is pretty quickly going to learn not to attack. If you see a duck attack another duck, wait 2 hours, and then run up and throw it, you're going to have a very anxious duck that has no idea what's going on.

A semi-related misconception is the idea that, if your dog pees in the house, you should rub the dog's nose in the puddle. This won't teach your dog not to pee in the house, because the dog doesn't understand that the act is the problem. If the dog learns anything other than "sometimes the human grabs me and shoves me around", it's going to be that it should hide the puddles, because hiding the puddles means that doesn't happen.

That's why animal trainers use clickers or similar signals, to bridge the gap between the animal performing a desired behavior and the animal getting a treat. For firm associations to happen, consequences need to be as close to immediate as possible.

And, again, how does a duck know what looks innocent to a human?

 

[Loopeend]

Pavlov responses require multiple repeats, and consequences have to be immediate or nearly so.

How about all the mornings where the owners didn't feed as many treats due to being distracted, or gone? Is that duck walking around with 20 different things in its little brain that it shouldn't do to get more in order to get more treats?

I sincerely doubt a duck is going to make the link between different behavior in humans, and a specific thing that it did earlier. How would the duck know that it was specifically killing another duck that was the issue, and not, say, being loud, or a car making specific noises?
If you see a duck attack another duck, and you run up, grab the attacker, and throw it, and repeat every time it attacks, that duck is pretty quickly going to learn not to attack. If you see a duck attack another duck, wait 2 hours, and then run up and throw it, you're going to have a very anxious duck that has no idea what's going on.

A semi-related misconception is the idea that, if your dog pees in the house, you should rub the dog's nose in the puddle. This won't teach your dog not to pee in the house, because the dog doesn't understand that the act is the problem. If the dog learns anything other than "sometimes the human grabs me and shoves me around", it's going to be that it should hide the puddles, because hiding the puddles means that doesn't happen.

That's why animal trainers use clickers or similar signals, to bridge the gap between the animal performing a desired behavior and the animal getting a treat. For firm associations to happen, consequences need to be as close to immediate as possible.

And, again, how does a duck know what looks innocent to a human?

We have the same opinion. Ducks can learn.

'and, again, how does a duck know what looks innocent to a human?' You gave the asnwer yourself.

"Pavlov responses require multiple repeats"
The ducks has many morning that are repeated the same. They are different whe she killed a duck.

She learned by now what scary or not-scary behaviour from humans is. They are group-animals. And prey-animals. Very sensitive to behaviour from other species that might mean that they are in danger.
Mornings were she killed a ducks we come off more as an thread to her. We talk louder, make bigger gestures, make harsher sounds. We come off more threatening.

Ducks, dogs, humans; what do we do when someone acts like a thread but you don't understand why? We become humble and innocent and pleasing. We try to show as much as we can that we are not a thread in the hope they stop threathening us.

A duck can do that too. 'act innocent'. Does she act innocent because she knows that the bible says that you should not kill others? No. Or her parents told her that? No. But she knows killing other duck = humans acting scary/different/less food. There is a brain in there. 360 same mornings with relaxed humans; 5 scary humans ones that are all also 5 nights that she had some duckfight. She cán connect that.
Just like they can connect that we kick them out when we notice them being inside robbing the catfood; and being more silent will result in us less noticing that they are doing that.

I don't even understand what you want to have a discussion with me about anymore. We seem to be on the same page. And if I am mistaken in that maybe we should end it with agreeing to disagree. Maybe my ducks can and your ducks don't. No clue. Not all ducks, just like humans, are the same. There is probably a big chance that my ducks are more prone to adapt on/to human behaviour because we raise them in our house when young and they are not duck-raised. Creating a situation that it is more important for them to try to make something of our weird human behaviours. Or maybe we have by accident just some smart ones. We also had dumb ones. Some flew into a window once and never did it again, for some we had to put stickers on the windows because they don't learn so fast 'flying into window means pain' and keep doing it. Who knows. Probably how our ducks are raised is massivly different because it's not the same situation. Not the same environment, weather, plants, food, available humans and how they act, etc.
My ducks recently were introduced for the first time to children. Two children. The two children loved playing 'chase the duck'. If these two children were in their life daily from the beginning; they probably had different behaviour. They might be more scared of children because said 'chasing duck' games or less stressed out because they are used to these games. Who knows.

But a discussion about what ducks can do or not do is a bit pointless when we do not have the same test-subjects.