Pet Ducks Dumped in Neighborhood Pond, Help?

[Miss Lydia]

Believe me any contentious keeper of water fowl would be doing the same. Your a great person for caring.

 

[SansDuck]

Believe me any contentious keeper of water fowl would be doing the same. Your a great person for caring.

Thank you so much Miss Lydia, you always make me feel so much better when I have to make tough duck decisions.

And I know this sounds silly as you told me large drakes can mate with small ducks, but the WH being smaller then the ducks gives me a lot more relief.

The anconas have such little legs, I would feel so guilty if Fergus hurt them out of being to aggressive or worse drown one of them with his weight.

Fergus and the ancona girls were like the equivalent of a male great Dane mating with a female chihuahua, now it's the complete opposite.

I honestly prefer the girls to be bigger then the boys, it feels so much safer this way.

It's like the girls are in charge, and they decide when and if they want to mate vs the other way around.

Also what was kinda interesting is that I just learn of the eclipse molt, and that drakes hormone levels apparently go down quite a bit for a few weeks.

Well when we decided to try to introduce Fergus to the flock, I notice he didnt have his drake feather and saw his side of the cage was covered in feathers.

I assume he was going through his eclipse plumage and thought he would be less hormonal, I was wrong, he made sure to make those two days count when it came to mating.

I'm guessing not every drake calms down durning the eclipse plumage?

 

[Miss Lydia]

Evidently not. Just know that what your doing is fine. Fergus has a wonderful home and can visit with the other ducks he just can’t terrorize them. At last he is safe and you all care for him and the others that’s what really matters.

 

[onaharley]

I think you have 2 options here.

1) Rehome the bonded pair that was dumped at your neighborhood pond. They are bonded and would need to go together, to a good home as pets. The Pekin drake might never calm down....it might be years before he does. This option would be very hard for you as you stated before and i don't blame you for not wanting to rehome these two. But i feel like these two would need to go together.

2) Rehome the WH. The chances of finding him a home is far greater then trying to rehome a pekin. WH are very beautiful breed, are a very docile breed and desired by many. As you suggested the WH would be the ideal drake for your flock but then that leaves your pekin drake to be constantly locked up (if you can't or dont want to rehome him). That will be stressful on both you and him. I have found that with pekins - or at least mine - the more they are locked up and kept only to admire their ladies from afar, the more aggressive they become.

A last ditched effort if you wanted to keep them all would be to have 2 set ups and divide your ladies up between your drakes. I know this is not what you want to hear nor have to go through. I wish you the best of luck

 

[Duck mommy 2019]

I think you have 2 options here.

1) Rehome the bonded pair that was dumped at your neighborhood pond. They are bonded and would need to go together, to a good home as pets. The Pekin drake might never calm down....it might be years before he does. This option would be very hard for you as you stated before and i don't blame you for not wanting to rehome these two. But i feel like these two would need to go together.

2) Rehome the WH. The chances of finding him a home is far greater then trying to rehome a pekin. WH are very beautiful breed, are a very docile breed and desired by many. As you suggested the WH would be the ideal drake for your flock but then that leaves your pekin drake to be constantly locked up (if you can't or dont want to rehome him). That will be stressful on both you and him. I have found that with pekins - or at least mine - the more they are locked up and kept only to admire their ladies from afar, the more aggressive they become.

A last ditched effort if you wanted to keep them all would be to have 2 set ups and divide your ladies up between your drakes. I know this is not what you want to hear nor have to go through. I wish you the best of luck

Pretty sure they said that the female is happy with the other females and WH. The best option for her would probably be to let her stay with her new friends. Even if they move homes, he probably won’t calm down and if the WH is rehomed the girls will probably miss him more. Maybe he can have a few visits a week with them so they know who he is but it may be best for him to be completely separate in his own coop

 

[SansDuck]

I think you have 2 options here.

1) Rehome the bonded pair that was dumped at your neighborhood pond. They are bonded and would need to go together, to a good home as pets. The Pekin drake might never calm down....it might be years before he does. This option would be very hard for you as you stated before and i don't blame you for not wanting to rehome these two. But i feel like these two would need to go together.

2) Rehome the WH. The chances of finding him a home is far greater then trying to rehome a pekin. WH are very beautiful breed, are a very docile breed and desired by many. As you suggested the WH would be the ideal drake for your flock but then that leaves your pekin drake to be constantly locked up (if you can't or dont want to rehome him). That will be stressful on both you and him. I have found that with pekins - or at least mine - the more they are locked up and kept only to admire their ladies from afar, the more aggressive they become.

A last ditched effort if you wanted to keep them all would be to have 2 set ups and divide your ladies up between your drakes. I know this is not what you want to hear nor have to go through. I wish you the best of luck

Hi, thank you for reading the thread and responding!

The thing about Downy and Fergus is that I'm not sure if they are a bonded pair tbh. Before they got abandoned at my pond, there were orginally four ducks: two drakes, and two ducks.

According to the information I got from a neighbor, one of the drakes got killed by its original owners dog and that's why they no longer could keep the other three.

So When they got dumped here, there was only two ducks and one drake, they would all follow each other around closely for the weeks they were out in the pond.

Then one night one of the ducks got attacked by a predator, and after that I took the other two in, now know as Downy and Fergus.

As you can see there's really no way to know for sure if Downy and Fergus were ever bonded, as they could of both lost their mate and only had each other to cling too.

Wouldnt it be a coincidence that Downy and Fergus were orginally a bonded pair, and survive two attacks while the other bonded pair got such bad luck?
I mean it could happen, but that seems like some really bad luck.

Before we got more ducks, they sure acted like a bonded pair never leaving each other sides. But of course that's also common for ducks in general too, they are a species that gets lonely without each others company.

But now that we have both ducks and another drake, both Downy and Fergus could honestly care less about each other.
Downy doesn't hang by Fergus's drake jail pen, she goes out and plays with the other ducks. Same with Fergus, when he was allowed those two days of freedom he spent them chasing the new girls around instead of being with Downy.

Honestly, it's hard to look at them now and say they are a bonded pair.
I honestly think they were both just lonely, and only had each other before the other ducks came along.

A good example was when both Downy and Fergus were on the same side of fence together before we moved her to the baby side.
Even though she had a clean pool, she would refuse to go in it because Fergus was always in it.
Downy would allow her self to get filthy, all because she refused to bathe with Fergus. She ended up using her water bucket to try to splash water on her, and down her back so could at least preen herself.

Honestly, Downy did not look like the orginal duck I recused. Her feathers were all messed up, looked like she was just put through a drying machine and you could easily see the mud on her white feathers.

She also acted depressed in general, didnt move very much. Would put her head inside the water bucket, and lay in the same spot for hours.

It was just such a switch putting her on the babies side, that we kept her over there.

Even if we did give away just Fergus, I know Downy wouldn't care and Fergus wouldn't care as long as he got some duck girlfriends wherever he was going.

We have a back up plan for the WH, so if it comes down to it we already have that taken care of.
My worry is that Fergus is not going to behave himself even with the WH gone.

This is just a hypothetical situation but what if Fergus ends up hurting mini, the smallest ancona girl. What am I going to do?
Lock Fergus back up in drake jail, and go back to the way it was?

It would just suck to give the wh away, if Fergus ends up in drake jail again.

Fergus just mates way to roughly for my liking, the way he chases the girls down, the way he grabs anything he can including eyes, wings, chest, necks and everything else, he also takes forever to mate because of how huge and awkward he is and he smashes their head so hard to the ground it's depressing to watch.

The WH mates in the complete opposite way, like you said it might be because the WH breed is so docile but it's a lot smoother to watch the wh mate the ancona girls.

I'm just feeling confused, frustrated and guilty about everything.

I'm not sure what to do, I either feel bad for Fergus being locked up or I feel bad for the four females in my flock who seemed to be terrified by him.

Do I protect my females? Or do I give Fergus what he wants because he a pekin duck and doesnt like to be locked up? Either way I feel like I loose the situation.

I honestly wish that the other pekin female never died, life would of been so much simpler if it was the female pekin and Downy instead of Fergus. Plus I miss her so much, the way she ate food out of your hand...I wish I were able to teach that to one of my current ducks but I'm not sure how....

 

[SansDuck]

Pretty sure they said that the female is happy with the other females and WH. The best option for her would probably be to let her stay with her new friends. Even if they move homes, he probably won’t calm down and if the WH is rehomed the girls will probably miss him more. Maybe he can have a few visits a week with them so they know who he is but it may be best for him to be completely separate in his own coop

@Miss Lydia

Could what duck mommy 2019 suggest work perhaps? Supervised visits or even allowing Fergus to be with the flock durning down months when matting doesnt happen to frequently?

 

[Duck mommy 2019]

@Miss Lydia

Could what duck mommy 2019 suggest work perhaps? Supervised visits or even allowing Fergus to be with the flock durning down months when matting doesnt happen to frequently?

You could also completely separate him and get him a male to be friends with (then they won’t mate and the only worry will be if they get along)

 

[Miss Lydia]

Drakes mate drakes too. It's really not a win win, Drakes also fight.

As far as letting Fergus in with everyone during down times about the only way of knowing is to try and see how it goes.
Just keep this in mind you are there to protect your girls, If they are running and hiding and acting depressed then Fergus is over abusing them. Duck sex is rough to begin with but some drakes are over the top and it sounds like he is one.
These are not easy decisions to make but for now Fergus is okay being separated. And your females are okay with the WH drake so you see there are 2 kinds of drakes out there.

 

[Duck mommy 2019]

Speaking of rehoming ducks. How long will a duck remember it’s siblings and/or mother for?