Living arrangements

[Beth42]

Hi

I hatched some runners earlier this year. One lone male who is now 15 weeks and then I hatched another 9, who are now 10 weeks so we are pretty clear about who are the boys and girls.
Ratio is clearly well off and I have 7 drakes and 3 ducks!! (Damn) Can't bring ourselves to rehome any, so we are going to build another run.
So my questions are:
Should the runs be out of sight of each other?
Do they have to be separated all year, or just during mating season?
I would like to be able to hatch some of my own next year, so should I put the older male (as I know he's not related) in with the girls permanently or just when I want fertile eggs?

Many thanks

 

[fatty and friends]

thank you for keeping your boys and not killing them - i have 3 drakes and 2 girls so i keep them separated all the time, it’s fine if they can see each other. just make sure they can’t grab each other through the fence

 

[Miss Lydia]

@DuckyDonna has her boys separared from her girls right next to each other.

 

[Beth42]

Thanks for the replies - that gives us a few more options. They won’t be directly next to each other - but they may have to use the same pond, just at different times, so will be in sight of each other then.

 

[DuckyDonna]

My boys and girls are separated with a welded wire fence and along the common fence line I had to double up on the fencing so they wouldn't try to grab through. I left about a foot between the 2 fences which is working pretty well.

They each have their own pools so that's not a problem. Just one more thing for me to do. The boys don't seem to mess their pool up as much, probabaly because they're too busy pacing the fence line! They don't eat or poop nearly as much as the girls do either so their pen clean up is easy every morning. The girls is awful and I think they are part pig!

 

[Beth42]

That’s interesting about the girls making more mess The girls definitely spend a lot more time in the water.

Thanks for the info

 

[HollowOfWisps]

My boys and girls are separated with a welded wire fence and along the common fence line I had to double up on the fencing so they wouldn't try to grab through. I left about a foot between the 2 fences which is working pretty well.

They each have their own pools so that's not a problem. Just one more thing for me to do. The boys don't seem to mess their pool up as much, probabaly because they're too busy pacing the fence line! They don't eat or poop nearly as much as the girls do either so their pen clean up is easy every morning. The girls is awful and I think they are part pig!

100% agree with the boys being so much cleaner than the girls. My hens throw water like a bunch of toddlers so I keep trays underneath their buckets at night, but the boys I don't even need a tray they barely get any water anywhere.

 

[Beth42]

Update - boys and girls were separated before things got too hairy, and apart from some initial outcries, everything was working out well.
I then hatched 5 more ducklings as we had promised some of the original ducklings (she wanted girls) to a colleague who then had to pull out whilst the others were in the incubator. These were big enough to go outside by mid September, so we have put the older girls back in with the older boys so the little ones could have their run for now.

I was hoping mating season would be done by now, but no, there is still too much going on for my liking, so I am now having to separate the boys and girls to sessional free ranging during the day (they seem to have calmed down by the evening)

So after all of that rambling... my question is, does mating season ever stop for runners? We're still at about 16deg C (That's about 60F) during the day here. Is the mating season it down to the climate?

Once the ducklings are old enough (in about 6 weeks time) I plan to have single sex runs again.

 

[Miss Lydia]

It's slowed down here. So fall does bring it down a notch. When it gets really cold they aren't breeding.

 

[Beth42]

Fingers crossed then that the temperature drops soon then - I live in quite a mild part of the UK and it rarely gets much below freezing...