voice change overnight

[tia]

My little Mallard duck's voice changed overnight from a nice sweet little chirp to this deep little chirp... I'm thinking it must be a drake. I was very surprised. I walk over and talk to him when I come home from work....and his voice got deep overnight. He sounds a lot different than my runners did as ducklings... but they were all female... so that makes sense.

 

[rollyard]

I would have thought the deeper sound to be indicative of a female. I noticed the first rudimentary changes to my female Campbell ducklings voice @ about four weeks of age; seemingly O/N.

 

[tia]

Interesting. I thought the females had a quack and the males a deep voice... I know that is the case with my runners.

 

[rollyard]

Ok, I understand what you are saying so to be more specific, yes, the ducks have a "louder" quack, & young drakes a lower "raspy" voice. Sound better?

 

[L0rraine]

I currently have seven 'ducklings' (I think they are about seven weeks old now). I waited and waited for to hear some quacks and thought I maybe had two out of seven at 5-6 weeks. I went on vacation for a week and just got back and was listening carefully to them all last night and ..., I now have every imaginable range of raspy quacks - high and squeeky, low and honky, nearly silent and everything in between, but only one that even closely resembles the quack, quack, quack you'd expect from a duck. As T Hi knows, it seems I had all males last time, and it's not looking much better for this group unless there are just some unusual voiced females in the mix.