Topic of the Week - Drakes and Drake Behaviour

[Ravynscroft]

That is so funny! I bet Lady Grey is not impressed

Super calm here too. No mating since the Calls aren't in their breeding season and the Welshies don't have a light in the coop to stimulate them, and everyone is getting along very well. Waiting for spring to see if that changes - I doubt it, usually my drakes get along fine even in the midst of breeding season. We'll see if the WH drake that lives in with the Calls will tolerate the little guys around his big girlfriends. Although they got on fine this year, so I suspect all will be well.

Nope, not yet... but maybe if he keeps this up for a month she might warm up, lol! I swear they have passed around the story of Crash and the juvenile drake that invaded her personal space and paid for it!

If they got along this year, then they usually do the next breeding season as well... once an agreement is reached they usually stick with it...

 

[kesrchicky16]

I have totally fallen for my 1st drake, Indie. He hatched out in early April and we got him in a totally mixed flock with a mature female matriarch. He was the only runner in the group and the other 2 males flew away just after reaching maturity. Now I will cut flight feathers on all ducks under a year. After the adult hen got taken by a coon he became very protective and his 2 girls would follow him very closely. He has never been aggressive to me even when I've had to catch him and play vet. My last influx of ducks included a black Swedish × Rouen mix duckling that turned out to be a drake. I highly recommend that mix he is gorgeous. I removed all other drakes from my flock since I only had 9 females.

Indie was attacked by my roo that is on his last strike. Strike 1 attacking my son, strike 2 attacking my duck. Roo got his butt kicked by my husband and has since bowed and crouched every time I approach him. So Indie needed clean baths to recover from his injuries so I decided to meddle with flock politics since I still had 3 runner hens that didn't accept any male since I took their males away. Indie only has the stamina for 5-7 mating back to back! But he was a total gentleman to all of the hens. Only mating when they accepted his advances and stepping away when they pushed or bit at him. My indoor warm bathtub "of love" won them all over for him and he now has 9 ducks following him around and Darkwing trying to figure out what happened, why his 4 mature hen flockmates prefer to hang out with Indie instead of him.

Edited to add link to my post about ducky politics. https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/meddling-with-ducky-politics.1209404/#post-19227758

 

[GldnValleyHens]

All the trouble I get with my two Call drakes Gilbert and Jasper is the 3 hens head's get plucked bare. Now that pool season is over, the girl's head feathers are growing back. They are so sweet, but are pushy. Gilbert has this weird thing where he rushes after me and collides with my ankle, but doesn't bite. And they all nip at the chickens if food is involved. When we had baby chicks the ducks would rush at them and attack

 

[chickens really]

Full blown breeding season started...Many Friends local to me have breeding season started too..

 

[Ravynscroft]

Drake sexual maturity, just one thing I would like to address since it has become a rather rampant, incorrect rumor I have seen frequently in the last year...

Drake penises DO NOT fall off at the end of every breeding season and regrow for the next... I repeat, they NEVER grow back, so please do not amputate them if there is a prolapse UNLESS it is the last resort and for the overall better health of the drake...

 

[kesrchicky16]

Drake sexual maturity, just one thing I would like to address since it has become a rather rampant, incorrect rumor I have seen frequently in the last year...

Drake penises DO NOT fall off at the end of every breeding season and regrow for the next... I repeat, they NEVER grow back, so please do not amputate them if there is a prolapse UNLESS it is the last resort and for the overall better health of the drake...

I would ask if you were joking but I unfortunately believe there are people who could believe that.

 

[Ravynscroft]

I would ask if you were joking but I unfortunately believe there are people who could believe that.

Completely serious, unfortunately... there were a couple of obscure research projects about drake phallus' and a specific type of waterfowl that tended to shrink during off-breeding season and would re-enlarge again at breeding season... some of this was written up with less than clear, specific wording about exactly what was going on... a few people wrote up some satirical blogs from those misunderstandings thus spreading and propagating misinformation repeatedly...

I never, ever thought I wouldn't be able to count how many times I have had to tell others that their drakes equipment does not just drop off one day and regrow each year...

 

[Pyxis]

Completely serious, unfortunately... there were a couple of obsure research projects about drake phallus' and a specific type of waterfowl that tended to shrink during off-breeding season and would re-enlarge again at breeding season... some of this was written up with less than clear, specific wording about exactly what was going on... a few people wrote up some satirical blogs from those misunderstandings thus spreading and propagating misinformation repeatedly...

I never, ever thought I wouldn't be able to count how many times I have had to tell others that their drakes equipment does not just drop off one day and regrow each year...

Yeah, that was all over this year. That rumor suddenly started spreading like wildfire.

 

[kesrchicky16]

I never, ever thought I wouldn't be able to count how many times I have had to tell others that their drakes equipment does not just drop off one day and regrow each year...

I'll add that to my "don't try to count" file. It pairs nicely with "nope you do need a boy to get babies not just an egg," and "humans have eggs too."

 

[quackingdom]

Here’s my two cents, going on my experiences with Muscovy drakes:

I currently have five drakes. Two are new and have just settled in. They’re smaller than my established three, so they haven’t challenged the three. And I have 28 females. That’s about nine ducks per drake, not counting the two newbies. I’ve heard that Muscovies do best with about ten ducks per drake. That seems to work fine, although they do okay with more drakes per duck too. The three older drakes usually get along great. They nap next to each other, talk together, investigate the girls’ nests together, etc. About once a month, two of them will have a big fight, and after that everything’s fine and dandy again. Young drakes always get into fights no matter what as they try to figure out who’s boss and who’s not, but after a few weeks they’re fine.

I do separate them for the night, though. They have plenty of space when they’re free-range, during the day, but their two night pens are considerably smaller, so I put the top and bottom drake (who never fight with each other) in one pen and the middle drake and two new drakes in the other.

I’ve only had one that became aggressive. We got him when he was a few weeks old and handfed him a lot, so he became extremely unafraid of us. He started showing signs of aggression when he was about one year old, challenging us and pecking. Nothing we did really convinced him once and for all that we were boss, but today he’s fine. He’s over three years old now. Occasionally he’ll still challenge me, but I never let it get farther than that. I usually pin him down until he walks away when I “peck” him.

After him, I tried not to let any drake we were planning to keep become too tame. And none of the others have become aggressive.

I’ve never had issues with drakes hurting females or each other. When there’s a lot of young males just becoming mature (which is around four months of age, and is when they gain their hiss, start trying to fight and mate, and start developing caruncles), their sisters often lack a lot of feathers around their neck where the boys grab them, but they’ve otherwise been fine.

I feed them the same thing I feed the females—chicken layer mash and some milo (sorghum). They eat less than the females. They would probably do fine on just plain milo (or oats, corn, or wheat), though, except maybe when they molt and need more protein. My ducks do find a lot of their food from foraging.

A lot of people say Muscovy drakes have a major tendency to be aggressive and rough on girls. I find mine to be, overall, very peaceful, and once they’re older and not so hormone-crazed, they mostly just casually talk with other drakes or follow the girls around and keep an eye out for danger.

Here's a few pics. Captain, the oldest drake, just before his molt:

A young drake, four months old:

And King, who's two years old: