Ducky pulling siblings feathers

Feather-picking Duckling
January 12 2005 at 9:55 AM
Waterfowl Forum Meeting Place
My 3 ducklings are almost 5 weeks old. Goldy and Dre' are boys and Rocky is a girl. Rocky is small and her face is striped like a female mallard so we suspect that her father is Greenie, a small mallard cross mutt. Rocky terrorizes the other two (both considerably bigger than her) by continually grabbing their breast feathers and pulling them out. She eats them. Actually, if she drops the feathers, they all try to get them to eat them but the other two do not pull out feathers. I know when chickens eat feathers, the farm 'wisdom' is that they need more protein in their diets. But these guys still eat a lot of starter which is about 30% protein (I mix it with regular duck food now and in another week or two they will be on just regular food). I also suspected that this is just done out of boredom so I try giving them other things to bite on - whatever 'toys' I can think of and also old leaves from the yard which they enjoy a lot. But still Rocky pulls out the other guys' feathers (never her own as it hurts). Any ideas? The others run away from her or try not to face her or tell her off and peck at her bill. It's very frustrating. I've never had a duckling do this before.

-Chick Mom

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