More Duck Question!

[duckman]

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[DuckLady]

You should be seing the greenish tinge ont he drakes' heads, Ticks.

As far as scovies, unless you have all of the same sex, at a couple weeks old you will see a size difference. The males start getting bigger fast. And they have huge flappy feet.

 

[ticks]

ok thanks, I think I have 2 drakes, but one has a soft quack, a yellowish/orange bill, but the head is the same as my hens, same with feathering.

 

[ridder]

Hope I can help, we raise mallard ducks and had to keep the ducklings in the basement in the spring because of the cold weather...I agree stinky! Messy and alot of work. We built a couple portable pens that we finally moved them into that would take a heat lamp while it was cold. The only other alternative would build a pen with fencing or netting over the top and add extra length of fencing around the bottom of the pen ( about 1 foot ) and bury it into the ground laying it out at an angle away from the pen ( about 6 inches deep). If something tries to dig under the fence it will hit the buried fencing and will not be able to get into it. Right now we have a flight pen with 350 mallards in it , extra fencing around the bottom and netting over the top and haven't had anything get into the pen. Although we have a nightly visitor...owl that sits on the posts and wishes he could break in. We didn't do this with our chickens and lost 3 last week so live and learn,,we now have netting over the top of them too.

 

[ridder]

If you pick up a drake it will make a pitiful whistling squeek...if you pick up a hen it will quack.

 

[Buster]

Can I barge in and ask a question? Will a drake protect his girls the same way a rooster will? Should I worry about my drake fighting with my roos in the yard? The ducks seem to hang out in a posse together and don't mix much with the chickens- in fact they drive them away from treats if they can. Just wondered if I have to worry about my drake fighting with my roos.

 

[ticks]

I think drakes and roos might fight

 

[LoveMyBirds]

Quote:
If your Roeun are like mine, kind of stupid, and you have preds around, they will get eaten.

Mine won't go into my big pond...

My 1/2 grown Cayuga loves the pond. I just took them down last week for their first run at it to see what they would do.. They jumped in and had a ball..

What I did, was just build them a 8x10 pen with a little house inside. During the day I let them out to free range..