Rouen Drake

[duckking]

Well, we finally realized that we have 3 Mallard hens and 1 Rouen hen. They ALL quack now and quite loudly, may I add. So we ended up with a Rouen drake. We LOVE him! He is so sweet! He is about 8 months old and the females are all 5 months old. We've had the females since they were 2 days old. They are all doing well. He was accepted almost immediately after a few hours of running around and being chased. We went out the first night after dark and he was in their house with them.....he was on the opposite side, but they were all in there. Even the chickens like him....or pretty well ignore him and he them.

We FINALLY understand the the difference between a female quack and the drake with a sore-throat, kind of frog sounding noise. They are not even similar!

TWO questions - We have switched the feed to layer feed with a side of oyster shells. We checked and the consensus seems to be that the layer feed is OK for the drake. But we have noticed he is nibbling on the oyster shell as well. I thought a drake wouldn't do that? So now I'm freaking out that he is getting too much calcium. Any suggestions?

I cleaned out their pool today and noticed he tried to mount one of the mallards. She wanted nothing to do with him and just jumped out. She went back in and he seemed to leave her alone. My concern is that he is HUGE and she is so small in comparison and that he will drown her in there. My female Rouen now seems small in comparison to him and we all thought she was so enormous! I'm not worried about her, but I am concerned about the mallards and him. I didn't realize they prefer to mate in the water and the pool is about 2 - 2.5' deep. Should I make it shallower at this point?

Here's the new member of the family and the whole gang:


Victor

Clockwise- Josephine, Soap, Napoleanna, Price, Victor in the middle (of course)

Soap and Victor - the two Rouens

 

[Catstar68]

They are very pretty. Rouens are some of my favorite ducks...those and Pekins.
Being a Long Island girl, I just can't help but love those duckies!

 

[desertdarlene]

You've got some beautiful ducks there! I worry about things like you mentioned, too. We have several very large mallard-rouen and mallard-pekins at our local lake. One of them had his eye on a really small mallard (she was small even for a mallard). Luckily, she found a mate more her size and he went to court one of the larger females.

I do know, though, that huge muscovies sometimes mate mallards and the mallards survive. If it were my ducks, I would supervise them when they're together, just to make sure.

ETA: The ducks I am talking about at our local lake are wild ducks, but are tame and friendly like a domestic duck.

 

[KansasKid]

Beautiful ducks. I wish i knew what to tell you about the mating thing, i've been pretty lucky as the only mix mating seems to be with my mallard drakes to my rouen hens.

 

[duckking]

Quote:
Now THAT must be interesting to see

 

[duckking]

OK...so I'll try and knock mating issues off my worry list......Any thoughts on my drake nibbling at the oyster shells? Should I be concerned? I didn't think drakes would be attracted to it and he's already eating the layer feed. I know too much calcium can harm the males. That issue is still at the top of the list.....