Well, we've had some issues lately with our Pekin drake, 'Squirt' over powering our smallest Welshie 'Sweet Pea' now that it's mating season and nature has taken over his drive - he's just much bigger than she is
He's gotten into the habit of grabbing her head (as apposed to the back of her neck) in his much bigger bill, and this has caused an injury to Sweet Peas' left eye. It's healing up well now, and she has full use of it - I just don't want it to happen again.
Squirt doesn't mess with our other two female Welshies much, and our Khaki female doesn't take any crap from him (she's in charge here)
We've tried separating them for the past week - keeping Sweet Pea in the house in a soft pen at night, and only letting her out with the others while supervised.
However, Squirt still chases after her when we take them out for supervised yard time, it isn't convenient for us to keep separating them, and Sweet Pea doesn't like being separated - even with a pen mate at night.
Rather than re-home Squirt (drakes are nearly impossible to re-home), or send Squirt to freezer camp (our ducks are pets - he was our first duck, and has a great, outgoing personality), we think it might be better to find a loving, 'freezer camp free' home with an established flock for Sweet Pea.
So, we are looking to re-home Sweet Pea.
She is a 7 month old (hatched September 8th, 2014) Silver Phase female from Metzer farms, with absolutely beautiful coloring . . .
That's her on the left, photo taken today (you can see the area around her eye is still healing):
. . . . .
Hope this works out for you!!!Just an update - we've re-arranged the living accommodations in the duck barn to give Sweet Pea a more protected sleeping area, and are going to try to push through for the time being - Sweet Pea will be staying here with her flock for now.
Thank you for your comments and concern!!
Dan
