What happened to this duck?

[chris330r]

I had a drake this spring, for what ever reason, he just liked eating feathers. I only ever seen him get the chickens, but if they got too close he'd just reach over and grab a beak full of feathers from the gun shy chickens. Then he'd eat them. He mainly took them from middle of the back, not wing feathers.

Wow. Actually EAT the feathers?! Yuck lol. I've seen them pull at feathers of other ducks to show dominance but never eat them. I'm hoping it could be the case that a drake is asserting his dominance over the other drakes, but as Miss Lydia said, the cut on that white headed drake just looks too much like a clean cut done with scissors.

 

[Anime2lover]

That line is to straight and clean to be natural, or plucking. And it's certainly to much feathers cut to far. They can bleed to death being cut that far if you get a blood feather. The diagram from earlier is the correct way to do it.

Could it be possible that someone is trying to claim them??

 

[chris330r]

That line is to straight and clean to be natural, or plucking. And it's certainly to much feathers cut to far. They can bleed to death being cut that far if you get a blood feather. The diagram from earlier is the correct way to do it.

Could it be possible that someone is trying to claim them??

You mean trying to take them as their own? For what purpose? They're all the same family of ducks that have been out there for 2 years now and living all around the pond. Sometimes they stray far off to the park and I won't see them for a few days.
I can't imagine someone wanting to scoop them up and take them for their personal pets. Unless it's more sinister and they want to eat them?!
Now I just saw a third one out there with the same clippings. And these are only being done to the males. The females are all untouched. It's a real head scratcher for sure.

 

[Miss Lydia]

Maybe start asking around someone may have seen something .

 

[chris330r]

I will definitely ask around and come back to update with any info. I would think if someone did this to them, the ducks would be so traumatized by it that they wouldn't want to return to the area again for fear of that person.

 

[Quackter]

Wow. Actually EAT the feathers?! Yuck lol. I've seen them pull at feathers of other ducks to show dominance but never eat them. I'm hoping it could be the case that a drake is asserting his dominance over the other drakes, but as Miss Lydia said, the cut on that white headed drake just looks too much like a clean cut done with scissors.

Yes, yuck indeed. I actually had a big ole bite of a deep fried feather once. A chain seafood restaurant's batter dipped fried chicken strips, one was battered with a descent size feather underneath. Not delicious, 20 years ago and still remember. For that reason I asked my drake "Why are you doing this, they don't taste good?" Know what he said?...











"Whaahk whaank whaank."

 

[Miss Lydia]

I will definitely ask around and come back to update with any info. I would think if someone did this to them, the ducks would be so traumatized by it that they wouldn't want to return to the area again for fear of that person.

Maybe it happened down in that park?

 

[blackandtan]

I just noticed another one with the exact same wings missing. I snapped pics and this looks too much like a very clean cut like someone purposely cut the feathers off. Notice how all those quills seem to have a very clean break right in the same area. Like someone took shears to the wings and sliced them off.
If someone is doing this, could there be a reason? They stay in the area all the time and never fly away, so I don't see why anyone would want to make them flightless. And 2 ducks with the exact same wing cut is too much of a coincidence.
Could this still be a regular molt, or someone cutting off their wings?

View attachment 1925523 View attachment 1925524

Doesn’t look clipped to me, he’s just molting all his flights, you can see that his primaries are all growing in too, my ducks and geese all have looked like that when growing new feathers. Seems late in the season though.

 

[Tesumph]

Looks like normal molting to me.

 

[Miss Lydia]

Look at the other pics my Muscovy has never molted out his feathers in a straight line an all at one time