Male Pekin Geting Aggressive For Food

[duckiewuckie2020]

Hi, there is a community trail near my house where there are two pekins and one mallard/pekin mix. Since I walk around there daily I tend to give them some corn, peas and other stuff Ive read on websites dedicated to feeding ducks. For the past few days, Ive noticed that when the swim over towards me to eat the one pekin male is driving away the mallard/pekin mix. He runs his beak in the water and goes towards the mallard/pekin making sure he is at a distance.

The poor mallard/pekin seems to really scared even when I throw something right at him, waiting for the others to eat. Previously they used to eat together, peacefully and there were no signs of aggression. Is this normal ? why has this started, seemingly overnight ?? The mallard/pekin in general follows those two but this has started recently.

 

[SolarDuck]

Sometimes ducks get territorial over food, I'm not really sure if there is anything you can do about it since they aren't your ducks.

 

[duckiewuckie2020]

Sometimes ducks get territorial over food, I'm not really sure if there is anything you can do about it since they aren't your ducks.

aww bummer I thought I could assist in some way, thank you for your reply though. I thought maybe it was mating season or something so they are getting like that.

 

[sourland]

I would guess that breeding season and hormonal levels are a big factor.

 

[nao57]

Hey there!

I salute you for being able to observe and identify barnyard behaviors. This is a skill to watch and learn how to spot illnesses also, and for how to keep the herds of whatever you have healthy. You need to learn this to have a high survival rate among your troops (flock).

One trick you can do when you see this kind of behavior is to try to feed them in separate piles. You do this by trying to have the feed ready to dispense all at once...or reasonably close in time frame, and then put it out in separate piles with some distance from each other.

So the explanation; the separate piles and distance help to keep the aggressive duck from taking the food from the smaller ducks. This will in the long run help you to have less losses to a flock because the weaker ducks won't be as weak, as they'll have a chance to feed also.

Having to dispense much of the food at once, will make it so the aggressive ones can't eat their pile and then have enough time to go eat the pile from the others.

It isn't unusual for one or two of the ducks in a flock to want more than their share. But if you mitigate it enough, I think you can curb some of the aggression. An example; I have one smart duck hen that tries to eat her feed and then hop the fence into the other ducks to eat their feed also. I try to not let her do that, and while it doesn't always work it does help keep her not too aggressive. I also try to not dump all the feed in the same spot, for the same reasons of ducks not wanting to share with their brethren.

As long as the aggression doesn't result in outright fighting you will be OK I think. Even if they do end up fighting over food you can mitigate that and curb it by separating them. And then after the food is gone they won't fight after that.

Hope this helps.