Please Help Me Treat Duckling With Wing Injury

[HeatherKellyB]

They are at the age where they can be moved outside to a secure pen and coop. They grow super fast and out grow their inside brooders quickly. That's great you found the problem.

Thank you! They'll be in their duck house (my daughters outgrown playhouse ) by tomorrow. Still working on securing it. I was hoping the other 4 ducklings would grow more to a size I feel more comfortable with being outdoors full time. 2 of the ducklings are 1 to 1.5 weeks younger. The other Pekin had a foot deformity that wasn't treated until I got them at a week old, so it's smaller, or possibly another kind I suppose. I need to post a "help me identify" post with their pictures

 

[Miss Lydia]

We'd love to see pics and always fun to guess the breed so please post Pics.

 

[BigBlueHen53]

So glad it's no linger being injured! Sometimes it just takes playing detective!

 

[HeatherKellyB]

But .... what's causing the damage? Is a bigger duck pecking or bullying this one? Could a dog, puppy or even a rat have gotten to it? It's a mystery.... but one that needs to be solved.

UPDATE & Request for more advice:
So I got the ducklings moved outside. They get shut up in their duck house at dark & out first thing in the morning & throughout the day. The Pekin (it actually happened to 2 of my Pekin ducklings ~it was only once to one of them~ they are the largest of all of my ducklings) duckling was the one with bloody feathers on a few occasions. I suspected the brooder lid - hardware cloth- was the problem. I left the lid off and got their house finished and got them moved outside full time. The past few days I've noticed another duckling with bloody wing feathers. I'm not sure what breed it is but it's a little smaller than the Perkins, but larger than the two youngest/smallest ducklings that are approximately one week to 1.5 weeks younger than the duckling with bloody wing feathers. The reason I share the info on the younger ducklings is because I have caught one of the babies nipping the wings of the bloodied feathered one. What do I need to do to stop this younger smaller duckling from injuring the wings of the other one? I've not witnessed any aggressive behavior from any of them towards each all

 

[DuckyDonna]

I'm not really understanding. Are you saying you think the hardware cloth possibly is cutting them? If so and it causes bleeding that could make the others pick at the wound I would think. Are there sharp edges of hwc where the ducks could cut themselves on it? If so you could put a thin strip of wood over that area and screw it down to hide the edges.

 

[HeatherKellyB]

I'm not really understanding. Are you saying you think the hardware cloth possibly is cutting them? If so and it causes bleeding that could make the others pick at the wound I would think. Are there sharp edges of hwc where the ducks could cut themselves on it? If so you could put a thin strip of wood over that area and screw it down to hide the edges.

My apologies. Initially I thought the hardware cloth was the cause of the wing feather injuries but now I realize that I was wrong. The ducklings are outdoors 100% of the time and they're not around anything like that. I have witnessed the youngest smallest duckling nipping at the wing feathers of the one that is experiencing bloody damaged wing feathers.

 

[HeatherKellyB]

I don't know why a younger smaller duckling would injure the wing feathers of their flockmate (not sure if that is correct wording)

 

[Miss Lydia]

Do they have plenty of space to forage? Pool time? A lot of time feather plucky can be from boredom so try giving them more things to do forage time swim time.