When can I let them together?

[Goat_Walker]

I have three groups of ducks.
3 Females in one pen
3 drakes in another
and my mama duck and her three week old ducklings.


Now, my three females are almost old enough to start laying eggs.
When they start, should I let my mama duck out with them? She is always pacing the fence to be with her drakes, yes, her drakes. SHe is a bossy little thing.

Once they start laying im going to give the six duckling free ducks the run of both pens, so that I have some fertile eggs. should I let mama out with them, or leav her with her ducklings? she has already started laying again, and im running out of egg cartons.

 

[mbrown]

I would let them out together and supervise for a while. I have a mama goose with 7 babies, and when we let her out she pretty much pushes anyone out of the way that she doesn't want near her babies. The other ducks/geese/chickens, for the most part, get out of her way and give the babies plenty of room when they walk by as to not upset mama and papa. We have 2 Rouen drakes however that do tend to want to attack the babies. So I would keep a close eye on the drakes. The female birds haven't been a problem though.

 

[Goat_Walker]

when I had my first duckling the males all ran away from the screeching little bundle of fuzz, but then if they were around mama, the mallard would strike out at the chick

 

[Wifezilla]

Integrating different age groups is a challenge. When we put Bungie and Uno together, we went very slowly over a week to get them used to each other. Bungie did the "neck flop" thing to Uno so we had to make sure Uno was big enough to not get crushed...LOL

Now Uno is trying it with the new babies. They are only out together when I am there to supervise. So far so good. She isn't being super aggressive or anything, but you can tell she wants to establish pecking order RIGHT NOW

Bungie is curious but doesn't seem to be as concerned as Uno. I think he is just happy he is the only boy in the flock now. Chrissy could care less. She is so easy to get along with