Male Ducks

[Palinor]

When we got ducks we took a gamble and just picked from a box of duckings. It turned out that we have two male mallards. We've raised them from babies and even took one to the vet when he had an eye infection. I'm really attached to them. But, we have chickens and also a female duck and I"ve had to get one of the mallards off her and I've also hear about duck rape of chickens too. I"m not killing our ducks, no way. But I am looking for ideas on what to do with them so they won't be bothering our female flocks members

 

[pineapple416]

I would recommend getting more female ducks if you plan to keep both males. There really isn't a perfect number but I think a ratio of about one male to four to five females would be good. This would keep the males attention spread out and not just on one duck. If they get to aggressive with the females or end up hurting or your chickens you might have to think about rehoming them or maybe separate them from the rest of the females. I recommend getting sexed ducklings in the future to prevent this problem unless you are trying to hatch babies. There are also some auto-sexing varieties of ducks meaning the males and females are different colors as chicks and as adults. Be sure you know what you're looking for though because we ended up getting a male duck through auto-sexing ducks on accident. Hope this helps, good luck with your ducks and chickens.

 

[Palinor]

I would recommend getting more female ducks if you plan to keep both males. There really isn't a perfect number but I think a ratio of about one male to four to five females would be good. This would keep the males attention spread out and not just on one duck. If they get to aggressive with the females or end up hurting or your chickens you might have to think about rehoming them or maybe separate them from the rest of the females. I recommend getting sexed ducklings in the future to prevent this problem unless you are trying to hatch babies. There are also some auto-sexing varieties of ducks meaning the males and females are different colors as chicks and as adults. Be sure you know what you're looking for though because we ended up getting a male duck through auto-sexing ducks on accident. Hope this helps, good luck with your ducks and chickens.

Thank you for your reply! Our future intent is to definitely get sexed ducks. We have two mallards and while we want to get some more female ducks we can't get 8 more ducks. Do you have any information about releasing them at all? My college has a lovely pond that I was thinking of letting them enjoy or just letting them free roam our property. They're quality of life is very important to me but I also can't have them all over my girls

 

[pineapple416]

I agree that releasing them or letting them roam free would be a good plan. It's nice that you care about the quality of their life as well. Some people don't really seem to care about that as much as they should. I'm sure they would have a great time in a nice pond and you could probably go to check on them too if it is at your college. Mallards are a more wild breed of duck so I am sure they would do just fine living in the pond. We had to release some of our Mallard ducks because they had ducklings and just kept repopulating until we had like 40 ducks! They seemed very happy to get to dive all the way to the bottom of the pond.

 

[Palinor]

I agree that releasing them or letting them roam free would be a good plan. It's nice that you care about the quality of their life as well. Some people don't really seem to care about that as much as they should. I'm sure they would have a great time in a nice pond and you could probably go to check on them too if it is at your college. Mallards are a more wild breed of duck so I am sure they would do just fine living in the pond. We had to release some of our Mallard ducks because they had ducklings and just kept repopulating until we had like 40 ducks! They seemed very happy to get to dive all the way to the bottom of the pond.

Yeah, that never made sense to me. Their animals too and deserve the best quality of life that they can get