Hello everyone. This is going to be a lot, partially because I want to give all info I know and vent.
So in the past year we have survived a fox attacking my female Pekin. She healed beautifully and was 100%. Now it's been about a year since that event and recently we found out she has arthritis in her hip (not related to the fox attack). We took her to the vet and she had an x-ray taken and she was prescribed anti-inflammatory medication. We kept her inside away from the male to rest (I have one male and one female). She seemed to walk better and was ready to go back outside.
A month later, she is limping again and it's a bit worse than before. The vet prescribed the meds again. So here is where I need some advice or direction. I know that to give her a break from the male is to get more female ducks but that is not an option. We have an awesome enclosure built for them that they love and we can only handle the two.
I would like to do this: keep her in our house like we did before while she got rest (in the morning to the afternoon until someone was home from work) and let the meds work, let her back out to go in the pool and get fresh air but keep all time outside supervised to keep the male from being so rough with her. And then let her back into the duck house where we lock them up at night to keep them protected.
So this is where I am unsure, I do not know that if the male does not have his usual go around with the female all day that the moment they are locked in the house together (house is a good size, like a big dog house that has plenty of room for two ducks) he will try to mate with her at night in the house. She is to the point where she has no feathers on her neck and now he is just grabbing skin and she has a cut above her eye from him. Even when she is out of the pool and resting in the straw, he is still trying to mate. It's stressful and upsetting to see her in pain. And he is very rough with her. I feel she doesn't try to get in the pool anymoreu bc of him.
So that that is our plan. Please let me know what else or different I should do.
Thank you so much!
So in the past year we have survived a fox attacking my female Pekin. She healed beautifully and was 100%. Now it's been about a year since that event and recently we found out she has arthritis in her hip (not related to the fox attack). We took her to the vet and she had an x-ray taken and she was prescribed anti-inflammatory medication. We kept her inside away from the male to rest (I have one male and one female). She seemed to walk better and was ready to go back outside.
A month later, she is limping again and it's a bit worse than before. The vet prescribed the meds again. So here is where I need some advice or direction. I know that to give her a break from the male is to get more female ducks but that is not an option. We have an awesome enclosure built for them that they love and we can only handle the two.
I would like to do this: keep her in our house like we did before while she got rest (in the morning to the afternoon until someone was home from work) and let the meds work, let her back out to go in the pool and get fresh air but keep all time outside supervised to keep the male from being so rough with her. And then let her back into the duck house where we lock them up at night to keep them protected.
So this is where I am unsure, I do not know that if the male does not have his usual go around with the female all day that the moment they are locked in the house together (house is a good size, like a big dog house that has plenty of room for two ducks) he will try to mate with her at night in the house. She is to the point where she has no feathers on her neck and now he is just grabbing skin and she has a cut above her eye from him. Even when she is out of the pool and resting in the straw, he is still trying to mate. It's stressful and upsetting to see her in pain. And he is very rough with her. I feel she doesn't try to get in the pool anymoreu bc of him.
So that that is our plan. Please let me know what else or different I should do.
Thank you so much!
