Sexing Ducks At 17 Weeks???? Making Me Nuttier Than Usual! Please?

[DuckLady]

Quote:
Drakes are worse.

 

[HarlansHollowFarms]

Quote:
Drakes are worse.

Hopefully the are all girlies! Ranchie has enough problems with the roos!

 

[ranchhand]

I am down to a very manageable 1.5 roosters now, and luxuriating in the quiet morning hours.

Should all these duckers be female I will definitely have turned the male magnet around!

Three are very quiet though, that worries me. Maybe I have late bloomers? I am sure of the age, wrote it on the calendar.

 

[pardygwyn]

I agree with the all-girls verdict for the mallards, also based on bill color. Here's a photo of a mallard pair I had a few years back at about the same age as yours:

The girl's up front, boy's in the back. It's a crappy picture, but if you look closely, you can see that her beak is shaded orange, his is shaded green, and the feathers at the top of his head and the edges of his mouth are starting to shed out green-black. Little bit of gray on his sides already, too, and if you could see his rear end, there would be a little curly feather popping out.

Also, that is the oddest looking "Khaki" ever. I like her! She really does look more like a mallard mix of some persuasion. Maybe a khaki got in with the hatchery's mallard population?

 

[ranchhand]

Thank you all for the good news!

I am delighted, I thought I was going to have 2 or 3 drakes to rehome. When they were still young, I posted pics and the consensus was that the odd duck was a Khaki Campbell. And as a duckling she did resemble one. I just looked at adult pictures and she is most definitely not one, lol. I agree, she's a Mallard mix of some sort. If she turns out to be the only drake that will be fine.

They are named Wynken, Blynken, Nod and Odd, Odd being the odd duck.

Pardygwyn, thanks for posting the pic, that really helped me see the difference. (And I haven't seen the word widdershins in years, that was a delight!)

Terrie, I guess I can sing "bad girls, bad girls" from here on out!

 

[Katy]

I just found this thread....cute ducks.

 

[allanimals21]

with the whole color of the bill thing. Are the bills that color from hatch or do they change? I've got 3 mallard ducklings that are maybe 12 weeks old. 2 are alot bigger then the 1 but I was told they are from different hatches. Would I be able to tell at all at about 12 weeks?

 

[ranchhand]

Here's a pic from when they were less than a week old, or close to that. Their bills and feet changed colors as they grew, but I don't know the specifics.

 

[pardygwyn]

I don't really remember what age the bill colors begin to differ, sorry. I've never had a duck whose voice hadn't already told me all I needed to know by 12 weeks, so I never bothered paying attention to when the coloration differences started.

Ranchhand: glad to help and also glad someone noticed it, that means my "kennel" name is doing its job! I breed old-fashioned working rough collies, which is both outside the norm and (hopefully) preserves a piece of times gone by.

 

[AdamD77]

I would have said by 12 weeks the voice would give the sex away, even without adult feathers or different coloured body parts

- girls have loud quacks, boys have a more raspy squawk