My ducks keep fighting?!?

[BlueO]

Hello everyone! So recently, I noticed one of my call hens fighting with another call Drake through the fence and sometimes my runner hens would get involved. They seem to be doing this off and on but then it stopped so I thought everything was fine. Just this night after I put the ducks to bed I heard loud honking so I ran to the coop to make sure everything was OK to find my two runner hens who have always been best friends fighting!? And my call hen wasn’t even involved this time and neither was the Drake. they’ve always been buddies and have been raised together as ducklings. I’ve never seen them fight each other before and one of them was making very loud honks while they fought to. I separated them, hoping that they would learn their lesson overnight but then they started doing it again and trying to do it through the chicken wire. They weren’t even able to actually touch each other, but they were still making noise and pushing themselves against the wire. Does anyone know how to stop them from fighting or why they could suddenly be so mad at each other? Any help would be very appreciated! Thank you!

 

[gtaus]

I raised ducks many years ago, but only one summer at a time. My ducks never got into any fights like you described. Maybe it's something territorial that comes over them as they get older? Like I said, I only had my ducks for the summer and then I let the Mallards fly off in the fall and butchered the other ducks before winter.

Here's a little something I found online that may help...

 

[BlueO]

I raised ducks many years ago, but only one summer at a time. My ducks never got into any fights like you described. Maybe it's something territorial that comes over them as they get older? Like I said, I only had my ducks for the summer and then I let the Mallards fly off in the fall and butchered the other ducks before winter.

Here's a little something I found online that may help...

View attachment 3978493

Thank you! They’re both around two years old so I would expect that to happen the first year. One of them was almost acting as she was broody, but she hasn’t been laying eggs for a while due to it being winter.

 

[MisfitDucks]

It’s possible that one of them laid an egg even with it being winter and the other was trying to steal it…though I only have three runners and I can tell you that I only have 1 broody female and the other Two are all too happy to give up their eggs for her to sit on…even though there is absolutely zero chance of there being a fertile egg in that batch which for runners is common as runners are generally not very broody. Plus they don’t have much of a fluffy butt to really concert eggs with…I wish I could have gotten a picture of my one hen attempting to sit on the few eggs she had in there because it was hilarious!! She was in a pretty goofy position! And boy was she mad when I did try to snap a picture of her looking so undignified holy moly!!