two male ducks not walking and have bugs on them please help!!

[isilma]

Hello and thanks for letting me join the group! I live in Naples Florida and have a 3 acres property where I take care of ducks, chickens, cats, peacocks, pheasants and quails, all my babies are free range and live a very happy life, some of them are special need and require extra care and love and I have two male ducks that are white, a bit bigger than the normal peking ducks and they are the reason I joined this group seeking advice in order to help them. My boys started having issues to walk when they were just about 3 months old (they are 1.5 years now) and I gave them brewers yeast and other supplements and got them up and about again, however they are very shy and they do not go to the food station and eat on their own, I separated them from the larger group and keep them in a 3000 SF fenced-in area with 3 girls and they were doing great for months, until a few weeks ago they started to have difficulty walking again, they stop eating and got very weak, so I started hand feeding them and giving them daily vitamins supplements and again they are walking much better but still not perfect, I notice when I had them in the pool that a lotttt of little bugs kind of yellowish were walking all over their necks and I am wondering if these bugs have anything to do with the boys weakness and they lack of appetite, and how to get them off of them without using any toxic poison, sorry for the length of my post and thanks for any help and advice you can give me

 

[lilmillefleur]

That sounds like mites or lice. That would be a problem. They suck their blood and cause them to slowly wither away. Mites can And often do cause death.
Use a 10% permethrin spray to get rid of them. Spritz it in their feathers.
@Texas Kiki