Muscovy ducklings males or females?

[Runa101]

Thanks, that makes sense. Ok, I'll keep taking pictures. They're so cute anyway, it's not hard! I've enjoyed my Welsh Harlequins, but these Muscovy ducklings seem just loaded with personality.

 

[Going Quackers]

What if they're all the same size, how do you tell then?

The head, the face the gestures it is rather hard to describe experience tells you sadly, they were my first birds and i have continued to own and breed them for years, i have seen A LOT of drakes and only this year have i finally had my females outnumber my males lol so i am beyond accustomed to spotting drakes almost has become a joke on here

If you examine the pics closely you'll see the head, legs, feet and overall "style " of the female is different. I do know i grow big drakes here, everyone always tells me that, its clearly my genetics that said these differences apply to the breed as a whole.

I'll try and dig up an old pic of a my clutch of 9 only 1 duck in there.. yes.. it was that bad lol Can you spot the duck? she is in the back second to the left! and no that is their "foster mother" before someone thinks i magically got all that colour from a white duck lol Drakes don't hold themselves as nicely as a duck does, they hunch, they lack the prettiness of the females sound silly but you can see it. For what it's worth i have NEVER had only 1 sex unless it was a single hatch... and again up till now it;s always been more boys vs girls this year has finally been my turnabout.

 

[Going Quackers]

I hope this makes sense. The one I suspect is a duck has a shorter and more compact body. Drakes have longer and wider tails. I don't always use feet and legs because my solid black female has tree stumps for legs! I will try to upload some pics of mine that shows the difference. The best thing you can do to "train" your eye to catch the differences is to take pics weekly to see how they change. Once you get this down you can predict the sex pretty early on.

Females have big legs no doubt but the drakes are bigger trouble is the leg on scovie is not the more feminine in my opinion so unless your used to seeing the different sexes people can mistake the foot/legs.

 

[GodsProvision]

Thank you for the information! Will be checking back when ours get bigger.

 

[Runa101]

Congratulations on finally reversing the duck/drake ratio! I hope we end up with more ducks than drakes with our three… Thanks for the input, it sounds as if we need more experience to figure out what sexes we have. I took some pictures and videos to my local poultry expert and he said he couldn't tell for sure yet, that in a couple of weeks it would be easier to tell, since right now they're all so close in size and feather development and lack of caruncles. He said we needed to be patient. Patience is not one of my virtues but I guess there's not much I can do to hurry mother nature.

 

[Runa101]

Muscovy duckling update - our ducklings are about 12 weeks old now, and we still don't know if they're male or female! They all seem to be about the same size, and we'd hoped that by this age we could see some difference in size. These are pictures from today - the 3 Muscovy babies and a 2 year old Welsh Harlequin to show size difference. They're a bit smaller than the Harlequin, I think. All three are starting to fly short hops. Can anybody tell what sex they are?

 

[KelC0308]

Drake Muscovoys legs are spread apart mor and on the outside of the body the females are more centered under their body and walk like they're gonna step on their own feet

 

[txcarl1258]

I would say they are all girls but it's kinda hard to be sure. Only girls tried to fly at that age as the boys were too big.

 

[Runa101]

I've tried to tell whether their legs are closer together or farther apart but they keep moving them. Silly ducks won't hold still! Sometimes they stand with their legs far apart and other times they're tripping over their feet, all pigeon toed. It would be awesome if they were all girls! We use a lot of duck eggs.

How big would a male Muscovy be at this age compared to other ducks? They're about the same size as the Welsh Harlequins, maybe a bit smaller, and smaller than the Black Swede.

 

[txcarl1258]

Mine are huge at 12 weeks pushing 8 to 10 lbs. I wish I had a picture of mine at that age. Most of my drakes have droopy wings at that age due to the blood feathers coming in and their wings are too heavy for their muscles to hold them up.