Muscovy gender

[SkyeT]

I've been doing some reading lately, mostly about sound, gender and behavior, since my two are getting older and we will be getting three more females in the next few weeks.

According to articles I've read, the male has nearly no voice, just hisses. The females "trill" or sing a call that is like a flute alternating between 2 notes. If this is the case, both of my muscovy are females. One is larger than the other, but one week about 3 weeks ago, the smaller one had stopped eating and moving. I had to hold her and hand feed her a fruit salad of oatmeal, grapes, watermelon and tomatoes.

Do any of you Muscovy keepers hear your male make any other sound except the hiss? Does he sing?

 

[Quacking Pigeon]

Here’s a video of my muscovies socialising:

 

[SkyeT]

okay. That helps. Neither of my Muscovy sound like your monster white duck. My goodness he's huge!

At about 2 minutes, I hear the trilly song that I hear from both of mine and that sound came from one of the smaller black ducks in the background behind the white one. I assume those are the girls. Fiesty girls, at that!

 

[Quacking Pigeon]

okay. That helps. Neither of my Muscovy sound like your monster white duck. My goodness he's huge!

At about 2 minutes, I hear the trilly song that I hear from both of mine and that sound came from one of the smaller black ducks in the background behind the white one. I assume those are the girls. Fiesty girls, at that!

That monster white duck is Mammoth and he is a drake. And the trilly song must have came from one of the girls.

 

[Quacking Pigeon]

Also do you have any photos of them? It may help

 

[Daphne_loves_mealworms]

How old are your Muscovies? I definitely would like to see pictures, although I am not good at determining sexes. I have two that are 12-ish weeks old. I think I have 1 drake (bigger, more silent, interested in my Rouen duck) and 1 duck (slightly smaller, trills all the time). I may be wrong. Muscovies are hard to sex! Anyways, please post pictures when you can

 

[SkyeT]

I will post pics and a video. Confetti is smaller than Cupcake. Both trill and sing.

As to age... somewhere between 14 and 16 weeks.

And then here is a good picture of them together.

 

[Table4Six]

You have one drake and one hen. One closer to the camera or phone is the female and the larger one standing just behind is the male. Beautiful ducks!

 

[SkyeT]

I thought that too, but the larger one is actually the better singer. Cupcake sings all the time. Sings while eating, sings while bathing, sings while stalking insects. It's a beautiful trill. If males hiss and such, why would this one sing? That is why I am unsure.

 

[Table4Six]

How old are they? Muscovies mature very slowly and it took my young drake quite some time before he actually got his adult male voice. And personally, with my muscovies, I've never saw the need to determine gender by voice, it much easier with this breed to go by size and physical characteristics.