How To Tell The Age Of A Duck

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At that place are lots of reasons y'all may want to know whether you've got male or female ducks or ducklings. In this article, y'all'll find out how to sexual activity ducks, regardless of breed or age!

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Use the table of contents below to jump correct to the section you lot're interested in or read the whole article for a deeper swoop.

Table of contents:

Part 1: What does "sexing a duck" mean and why is it important?
Part 2: How to sex MATURE ducks
Function 3: How to sex DUCKLINGS
Part iv: Duck sexing frequently asked questions

Office 1: What is "sexing" a duck? Why is information technology important?

"Sexing a duck" is the process of distinguishing between a male vs female duckling or mature duck.

Ambrosial ducklings taking a nap. Ane of the nearly of import considerations for pet or backyard duck parents is the sex activity of their ducks. In this article, you'll find out how to differentiate between male and female ducks, from hatch day through maturity.

Knowing the sex of a duck is a very important consideration for anyone considering raising ducklings or adopting mature ducks. That's because mixed-sex flocks can exist much more difficult to manage, leading to more fights, over-mating and other problems.

(See: Should yous go male person or female ducks or both?)

So how do yous tell the difference between male and female ducks regardless of historic period and breed?

Part 2: How to sexual activity mature ducks

Sexing certain breeds of ducks at maturity, like Welsh Harlequins, is quite piece of cake to do with your eyes and ears, every bit you'll read about beneath…

Let's start with the easy office: sexing 6+ week former ducks:

Method one. Vocalization cheque

If you've ever raised ducklings, you know they mature incredibly chop-chop. In fact, they look like miniature adults after virtually six weeks. At that point, y'all can start to tell the difference between male and female person ducks using your ears.

That'southward considering real duck men don't quack. Instead, drakes make more of a depression, raspy blurp-blurp-blurp sound. A drake could talk as loud every bit it wanted in your lawn and would likely be unable to let your neighbors in on the conversation — unless you have particularly nosy neighbors.

Only female ducks brand the distinctive (and loud) duck vocalizations that you call back of with ducks: quack-quack-quack. Granted they actually have a far more varied and nuanced vocabulary than "quack." When a female duck wants to exist heard, your entire neighborhood will know about it.

Vocalizations are an easy way to sex either:

a) Young 6-x week old ducks who oasis't yet earned their distinctive adult plume. (*Watch the video "Duckling vocalizations: 12 Days one-time to vi weeks quondam" in our How to raise ducklings guide.)

b) Monomorphic breeds similar American Pekins who have near identical plumage regardless of their sex.

Method 2: Plumage and other concrete features

Feather coloration – For older, mature ducks with dimorphic plumage (east.g. the males look different than the females), the easiest style to sexual activity them is to await at their feathers. Drakes of most mallard-derived breeds take gorgeous green-iridescent head plumage for a large part of the yr (nuptial plumage), until they become into their eclipse plumage when they look far less showy.

Female ducks within these breeds exercise not have green heads. However, for other breeds like Pekins (which are all-white), this stardom does not help in sexing.

(Learn more about duck plumage and molting patterns.)

Drake feathers – While in their nuptial plume, drakes too take "drake feathers," a few curled feathers on the top side of their tail.

Female ducks do not have curly drake feathers on the tops of their tails.

Other concrete features – Finally, some breeds — similar our Welsh Harlequins — also have other physical differences at maturity. For case, our Welsh Harlequin drake has bright orange legs and a yellow/orange bull, whereas our females' legs are more nighttime grey/green in color as are their bills. These physical distinctions are not universal to all breeds of ducks.

Using the distinctions detailed above (vocalizations, plumage check, & other brood-specific sex differences), you should be able to sex a duck that's 6+ weeks old. If you're trying to sexual practice a monomorphic breed, in that location won't exist a green caput to go by, just the voice and possibly the drake feather (if they're in nuptial feather) will indicate their sex.

Part iii: How to sexual activity ducklings

While there may be subtle physical differences between sexes of some duck breeds, physical advent isn't a reliable method of sexing ducklings.

At present comes the harder part: sexing those adorable little duckling fuzzballs that all expect virtually identical.

Methods: Downwardly color vs bill color vs vent sexing

In some duck breeds, there are subtle differences in down coloration betwixt male and female ducklings. In that location are too many breeds and too much variability (or lack of variability) to list here. Plus, this method is non going to help you lot definitely sexual practice ducklings.

Equally for bills: in very young Welsh Harlequin ducklings (days 1-3), a pinkish colored bill with a dark tip likely means female person, whereas a darker bill likely means male. All the same, this method is not definitive either and merely applies to one breed of duck.

The only 100% definitive way to sexual practice ducklings of any brood is vent sexing , also called vent checking. However, it's critical that you know how to practice vent sexing safely and correctly before you give it a try. And as John Metzer of Metzer Farms says, vent sexing is all-time washed on 1-2 day sometime ducklings — afterward that, it's more hard.

Warning: you can permanently hurt your ducklings with improper vent check

Before we dive into the how to's of vent sexing, we need to issue a very articulate alert. If a vent check is done incorrectly with too much force or for as well long a duration, y'all tin permanently injure your ducklings. Those little parts are quite delicate!

Thus, if you don't know how to conduct a proper vent bank check, please practice not go on. Let an skilful — such as an avian vet — conduct a vent check for you and possibly teach you lot how to practise it for hereafter reference.

Vent sexing instructional video

There are too excellent online instructional videos about how to sex ducklings. We'd highly recommend watching this Metzer Farms' video nearly vent checking before you consider doing the process yourself:

*For reference, Metzer Farms sexes tens of thousands of ducklings per year, and so they likely have more than experience sexing ducklings than anyone else out in that location.

How to vent sex ducklings:

A duck's anal vent, aka cloaca, is where their reproductive organs reside. However, in ducks/ducklings, neither the male penis nor the female person vagina is visible with a mere surface inspection. Hence the need for a deeper look…

When doing vent sexing, y'all're NOT trying to popular the [potential] drake'due south penis out past pushing on the surface area effectually the vent. Instead, belongings the duckling upside downward in one hand, employ the fingers of your other hand to gently pull back (non pushing or applying pressure) on either side of the vent in order to open the vent and expose the reproductive organs below.

Note: Your get-go time out, this process may exist easier with two people — ane to securely agree the duckling, the other to exercise the penis hunting (ha!).

If yous spot a drake penis (which looks like a pocket-size, low-cal-colored worm), yous've got a male. No penis = female.

If y'all're vent sexing a agglomeration of ducklings, you should cease up with almost a 50/50 ratio of males to females. If non, you've likely not been very authentic your first time around. If and then, don't feel bad – information technology takes a lot of do to get really skilful at vent sexing.

Part 4: Duck sexing ofttimes asked questions

At present yous know how to sexual practice male person and female ducklings and ducks, regardless of their age or breed! Hither are a few more than followup questions we're oft asked:

How practice you keep rails of male vs female person ducklings after yous've sexed them?

Are you hatching your own duck eggs? If you want to continue track of your male and female ducklings after sexing them, you lot tin can either:

a) separate them into dissever "flocks" immediately after sexing, or
b) keep both sexes together, only identify a zip tie (not too tight) around the ankles of one of the sexes, clipping off the excess tie.

Warning: If y'all apply nothing ties, you have to pay very careful attending as the ducklings' ankles grow and then you don't end upward cutting into the pare with the ties. Remove and supercede zip ties as your ducklings abound.

What'southward the ideal ratio of male person to female ducks in a backyard flock?

For backyard or pet duck parents interested in egg production, we recommend either non having any drakes or having no more than than 1 drake per every 3-4 females.

If you take more than one male, plan on keeping them separated for about of the twelvemonth to prevent fights and injuries. (Yes, we know this from experience!)

Not interested in eggs? Want to raise ducks for meat production? Or are yous instead interested solely in having good pet ducks with lower potential for medical issues?

Then having all drakes could be a good pick for you. Without any females around, males are also far less aggressive.

Read more on this topic in our commodity: Should I get male or female ducks… or both?

Sexual practice vs gender: what's the difference?

"Sex activity" refers to reproductive organs. "Gender" refers to a critter'southward sexual identification, e.grand. primarily a function of the brain. Confusingly, these terms are often used interchangeably fifty-fifty though they're quite different, biologically speaking.

We and many other lawn poultry owners we've spoken with accept had curious and humorous situations wherein their female ducks and chickens seemingly kickoff to await and act similar males.

For instance, our duck Mary (who nosotros now jokingly call Marty) even has the secondary sexual practice characteristics of a drake: green caput during nuptial plumage, orange feet, and curled drake tail feather. What the heck?

Mary/Marty the duck. Even though she's biologically female, you tin clearly see secondary sex characteristics typical of a male person/drake Welsh Harlequin, including orange anxiety, green head feather, drake curl, etc.

What's the cause of this phenomenon? Turns out due to prolific egg laying in years by, Mary/Marty experienced ovarian damage. With non-functioning ovaries, her body stopped producing the hormones that made her female, so she started to revert to the default sexual practice in ducks/birds, which is male.

Mary'due south sex is female, based on her reproductive organs and chromosomes. What's her gender? Nosotros have no idea because she's a duck with a relatively simple brain and she'southward non saying. Her flock doesn't seem to care, but she and our drake (Sir Winston Duckbill) tend to arrive a lot of scuffles, thus requiring physical separation via fencing.

Encounter: Can ducks change sexual activity? The curious story of Mary/Marty the duck

Thankfully, when it comes to sexing ducks (or ducklings), most cases aren't near equally hard as Mary/Marty, as you lot've learned from this article!

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Want to run into a video summary of this article? Check out our Google spider web story, how to sex ducks and ducklings!

KIGI,

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Source: https://www.tyrantfarms.com/how-to-tell-boy-and-girl-ducks-or-ducklings-apart/

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