Male Pekin Ducks Ripping Neck Feathers Out - Female Ducks Neck Severely damaged :( Help!

[nolamimi504]

I had to rehome 2 drakes last summer. I put them on Craig's list and interrogated the people who said they were interested. When I was satisfied I agreed, not until.

You sound like me. When we decided to incubate our Pekin’s first clutch and hatched 6 babies but only 5 made it, we were looking to get rid of the males. I have 4 ducks (each a different breed) and only one is a female, “Goldie”. We’ve become attached to the four original ducks, and didn’t want to rehome them... it just so happens the 5 that hatched were all girls (Thank God ). The second batch only 2 hatched-one boy & one girl, which we’re keeping both. My brother-in-law stopped by when they were incubating and mentioned his friend has properly and it has a pond and might be interested in some ducks. When I started asking a ton of questions, including, can I see where he will be keeping the ducks LOL? My brother-in-law changed his mind.

 

[Miss Lydia]

Best way to find out. ask questions.

 

[Marlenarose]

Hello!
I have been a little MIA on the forum's lately and I apologize. I seriously appreciate everyone on BYC more than I can put into words, ya'll have helped me through everything while raising my ducklings and chickens too! With that being said,I have a big problem and I don't know what to do.

We have quite a total now of 12 pekin ducks and in the last 3 weeks we have slowly integrated them all together playing in the backyard/sharing a pen at night... boy they have all fought about it BUT luckily things have slowly improved and mostly everyone is cordial with each other.

We practiced the whole method of using a mini pen for the new ducks in the backyard so the original ducks we had could see them and get used to them, then after about a week of that we allowed them all to be together freely in the back yard and the fighting began mostly over the pool. Everyone seems to get along for the most part now except for these two big males who are pretty territorial especially over the pool and they chase off all the new ducklings, everyone is scared of him. A couple of the new ducks try to stick up to him especially when he is attacking another duck but I get nervous and split it up usually because he will rip feathers out and get really rough with them.

The primary issue with these two males is they are extremely rough with the girl ducks when mating! I know that ducks don't have the most "romantic/sweet" mating practices but this is far more aggressive than what I'm used to seeing with our ducks. A friend who owns pekin ducks said he has never had his male ducks rip out feathers of the females or any of the ducks for that matter so that was when I wanted to reach out to everyone on BYC and get some advice on how to fix this. They have ripped all of the feathers out of one of our female ducks named Delilah to the point where the entire back of her neck is bare skin/cracked open/bloody. Since it's gotten so bad we often have to keep the two males in a pen in the middle of the yard so they can't get to her while she's out and about during the day but we don't like having to keep those two males cooped up away from the pool all day long either. In addition we made a pen inside in our shop to keep her separated at night to protect her/allow her neck to hopefully heal up, with our two 2 month old ducklings who are sweet as ever to keep her company. They have bonded so well and have the sweetest relationship with her now.

**If anyone knows how I can treat her neck cuts or can tell me whether or not her feathers can grow back there and anything I can do to help her, I worry that it's painful as well for her.***

So some stuff we have tried; flipping the two agressive males over on their backs when they get too macho with the ducks, to try and show them that they "aren't the alpha" (we read online that this could help calm down their ego and ease their aggressive behavior).

We have tried keeping the two males in a pen separate from everyone else in the middle of the yard so that they are still around the others but they can't go over and attack them, but there hasn't been any improvement and the two males still make a bee line for Delilah every time she comes outside in the morning and try to get on her back to mate. Whenever the girl ducks are running away from them when they are trying to mate, the male ducks will run and catch up to them and grab their feathers or pin their necks down and hold them there for a few seconds until they submit to them, then they hop on their back and again bite at the gals necks. I'm also starting to see missing feathers on the necks of a couple of other ducks so I clearly need to address their behavior issues.

Thank You so much for reading all of that, I feel like I get way too into detail but I'd rather give ya'll too much information than not enough. If anyone has any advice or experience with this issue I would LOVE to hear what you have to say and I really appreciate your time so much!

Hope everyone is having a great day, I wish everyone and their flock a lovely weekend

I’m having the same issue.

 

[Marlenarose]

This is what my drake is doing.
I’ve been putting Neosporin on it in the evenings.
In 3 years it has never been this bad. She is the only one of 7 that he just won’t leave alone.

 

[Miss Lydia]

Drake jail please that is the worst I’ve ever seen in abuse. Separate him from the females ASAP.

 

[DuckyDonna]

That girl can't be with the males and if they are that brutal and you take her away they will find another favorite. Get those boys away from the girls now!

You're going to have to set up 2 runs each with a pool. The boys don't need much of a pool so just get a little kiddie pool and then that problem is solved. Can you make a divider for the pen?

I did all this and it's not that hard and it won't last forever so like me, you'll just have to deal with it until the hormones slow down. Believe me, I can't wait until I can put everyone back together again but I couldn't let my boys hurt my girls and they were.

Right now my 4 boys are pacing the fence line between the 2 runs. They want to be with the girls really bad but not happening until the fall so they'll just have to get over it. They have their own bucket of food, 2 buckets of water, and their own small pool. They will survive and so will the girls.

 

[kelguest]

That would be interesting... I've never heard of anything like that and doubt it would work male ducks will pretty much always try to mate things.

There is a product called Rooster Booster, I’ve been putting it on my ducks neck to stop feather pulling, works for about 2 days and then wears off, seems to do the trick , my 2 males are trying to have a good time with each other but one has feathers missing from his neck !

 

[kelguest]

That would be interesting... I've never heard of anything like that and doubt it would work male ducks will pretty much always try to mate things.

There is a product called Rooster booster , it’s a paste that tastes horrible to them, I’ve been using it for a week or so, doesn’t last long and you have to reapply, my 2 male ducks are trying to have a good time with each other and one has a bold neck