NewJourney
Songster
So, here's my dilemma. It's kind of a long story so please bear with me. We bought 2 ducklings from TSC and the same day bought 4 chicks from a local non-chain farm store. They've been raised together and do great together. We then hatched out (via incubator) 9 baby chickens that we are brooding separately. We fell in love with the colors and personality of the one duckling (which I believe to be magpie) so we ordered 6 from the local farm store. We picked them up recently, too. We are brooding those separately.
Finally we got the brooder house set up (outside next to our adult coop) and tried to put the original ducklings/chicks combo with the new 6 ducklings which are about 3 weeks younger. So, they are just a tad smaller than the chicks are but significantly smaller than the original two ducklings. The two older ducklings bullied the baby ducklings immediately when we put them together, so we immediately took the two older ducklings and put them into the adult coop (that has a drake), well I then saw the drake try to breed with one of the 3 week old ducklings (the runner/campbell if you've seen my other recent thread) and I immediately ran over and grabbed the drake off of the duckling and we secured him in a dog crate overnight because we have no other option because we have dogs. He did NOT penetrate the duckling thankfully. I pulled him off in time.
My question is: Is it normal for a drake to try to breed with a young duckling of about 3 weeks old??? If so, is it only females or will he try to breed with any duck/duckling? I ask simply to know if there is a way to tell IF the duckling is male/female by this incident.
We are taking the drake to another local farm store that will adopt him out to someone else. Since we are raising ducklings we know at least one will be a drake, so we are okay with not having one for 5-6 mos.
Also, the drake drowned one of my KC hens very recently, so, bye bye.
Finally we got the brooder house set up (outside next to our adult coop) and tried to put the original ducklings/chicks combo with the new 6 ducklings which are about 3 weeks younger. So, they are just a tad smaller than the chicks are but significantly smaller than the original two ducklings. The two older ducklings bullied the baby ducklings immediately when we put them together, so we immediately took the two older ducklings and put them into the adult coop (that has a drake), well I then saw the drake try to breed with one of the 3 week old ducklings (the runner/campbell if you've seen my other recent thread) and I immediately ran over and grabbed the drake off of the duckling and we secured him in a dog crate overnight because we have no other option because we have dogs. He did NOT penetrate the duckling thankfully. I pulled him off in time.
My question is: Is it normal for a drake to try to breed with a young duckling of about 3 weeks old??? If so, is it only females or will he try to breed with any duck/duckling? I ask simply to know if there is a way to tell IF the duckling is male/female by this incident.
We are taking the drake to another local farm store that will adopt him out to someone else. Since we are raising ducklings we know at least one will be a drake, so we are okay with not having one for 5-6 mos.
Also, the drake drowned one of my KC hens very recently, so, bye bye.