When do ducklings start quacking?

[Isaac 0]

My 2 week old white pekin has started making a different noise inbetween the usual peeps which sounds a bit like a honk! It’s deeper than a peep but obviously still quite high.

Is this going to develop into a quack? Or is this duckling a mistaken goose? Haha! The other duckling doesn’t make it. I wondered if the one honking was a girl and the other was a boy but then reading here now I’m not sure at all as they’re both still so young compared to all of yours.

Pekins are very fast growers so its a possibility.

 

[Mudstar4ever]

My three 3-week Cayuga ducklings have just started making “off” noises in the last few days or so. At least one is starting to form a crackly, honking quack noise. The other two still sound like babies.
My money is on one hen, two drakes!

 

[Miss Lydia]

Still maybe early so give it another week.

 

[corriemartin]

A couple of my Swedish blues, right around 2 weeks, just started making little sounds like squeaky toys, very different from the cheeping. But I have no idea if those are precursors to quacking or to whatever sound it is that drakes make. It's adorable, but what does it mean?

 

[corriemartin]

Or, how about this? When I was carrying them two-by-two from a pen in the back to their pen on the front porch, some of them had ear-piercing protests, and a few of them made hardly any noise at all, but a little rasping sound. They're almost three weeks old. Is that a sex difference? Or is it still too early to tell?

 

[Miss Lydia]

Kind of too early you’ll begin to hear changes by 4 weeks on where you may pick up a quack along with a peep.

 

[Mother of duckies]

Both of my older girls started to have "cracking" voices that would start out as a cheep but end in a semi-quack around 2-3 weeks. They weren't real quacks but darn, it was unbelievably adorable. I'm not sure really when they started to full-on quack though, sorry.

That's what mine, at two weeks, have started doing. I teared up the first time I heard it; it felt like my little ones were growing up so fast! But yes, it is unbelievably adorable!!

 

[Beth42]

Just trying to work mine out and came across this thread which is very amusing as it's all the things I've been hearing and pondering!
I have 9 runners at 7 weeks old, 3 are definitely girls and have been making lots of quacks from about 3 weeks. A few of the others showed promise a few weeks back, but have gone quiet on me now.
I have a slightly older one who started to rasp at 10 weeks (she did quack when we left the room when she was little) a few weeks later, I'm still holding out for a quack and hoping the curly tail doesn't appear....

 

[Alis1]

Hi, I’m responding to this very old forum question, but these answers helped me recently, so I thought I would add my recent experience. My Pekin duckling absolutely started quacking at 2 weeks old. These ducklings were sat on and hatched by my hen, so I know their exact age, and it was definitely a real quack at 2 weeks and 3 days old. So, yes, they can quack very early. BTW I love this forum, I always find a subject and answer I need.