whats with my ducks??

[Aurynsdream]

HI all
long time no see.
hers the schoop
I got some ducklings from Ideal back in the beginning of may- 2 Pekin females, 1 Pekin male and 2 magpie females. And some silver appleyard eggs- out of all the eggs only 1 hatched and turns out he is a male.

Everyone is doing wonderful.
The appleyard got his drake feather about 3 weeks ago- he hatched at the end of may.
The pekin male still does not have a drake feather, so I don't know which one it is.
Here is my dilemma. Out of all the ducks 1 pekin (small head puff) is the loudest of the bunch. The magpies make barely any noise and the other two pekins just make a rasping noise (one has a big puff and the other is a regular no puff variety)- which I assume is the raspy drake noise.
THe other day while in the big pond the peking w/o a head puff decided he wanted to mate with the females so I assumed that i just identified the male.
However the other quiet pekin (big puff) has not tried mating w/ the girls but it also does not make the same loud quaking noise that little puff makes. Big puff never fights with no puff.

Whats the deal??
also is it normal for drakes to be mating with the females this early?? The confirmed girls will actively seek no puff out to mate with him.


Thanks for reading this novel I wrote.
I am also trying to find a silver appleyard female for my lonely appleyard gandalf.

 

[waterfowlrescue]

Drakes will mate other drakes as well as females in a sign of dominance. If your ducks are just maturing they may just be establishing the pecking order. The one male may not be interested in being the boss while the other one may want to show dominance. So I wouldn't necesarily consider it mating and I would go by your ducks voices for the sexing.

In my experience when i approach our ducks i notice that males tend to talk alot and girls only talk when they have something important to say (no offense guys) or your picking them up or otherwise harrassing them.

 

[Aurynsdream]

thanks for the quick reply.
Does your judgement of their talking apply to the magpies too??
Well the one loud pekin likes to talk a lot- guess she deems herself very important.

If I were to go by just their noise level I would say I have 4 males and 1 female- which would be very depressing.

 

[waterfowlrescue]

Almost all mallard derived domestic ducks have pretty much the same vocalizations.

The amount of talking was sort of a joke, but not really

Of course I have had some bossy girls who were always quacking and putting people in their place. So its not in any way a reliable method for sexing.

There is a good article on duck sexing on the majestic Waterfowl website. You migth want to read it over and play the sound files and see if that helps.

http://www.majesticwaterfowl.org/artquacks.htm

 

[Dodgegal79]

Pekins and runners tend to be the noises out of all ducks. I have one pekin female that I had to get rid of, she would start quacking at 5 in the morning and it was none stop.