When I feed my animals this am, I noticed one duckling, about 2 weeks old, had scratch-like marks on his neck. They have a large pasture area to roam, but keep close to the shallow pan of water and feed.close to shed. I decided to finish feeding and see how the baby was doing--it was running with the rest of the little flock but seemed a little wobbly. Anyway, before i could make that decision I saw the drake attack it and looked like he was trying to kill it. I intervened and brought the baby into the house. But his neck seemed to be broken so I placed it in a box and supported it's neck while I looked up possible care on BYC. Right after finding I should just put the more thing out of his misery, I went to the baby and it was dead. WHY?? Why would the drake do that? he seemed to take good care of them and was very protective of his little family. What can I do to keep him from killing or hurting more of the babies??? I am going to bury this little one in my garden.
Drakes display dominance and tend to exercise at least part of the breeding behavior on whoever is available as an instinctive behavior meant to ensure continuation of the species. He was being a Drake. An adult duck would have been fine with what he was doing but a 2 week old lacks the mass and musculature for it. I would suggest separation to prevent further incidents.
We can be really blindsided by adult-duckling interactions. Even duck mothers have turned on ducklings from time to time. You know now to keep them separated until the ducklings are at least full height, and then supervise interactions until you are sure they will be safe.
