in today's video I'm gonna talk about
sexing ducks those guys you better stay
away from my birds I see you circle in
there so far we haven't had trouble with
aerial predators keep those fingers
crossed
ladies and gentlemen literally I need to
figure out who the ladies and the
gentlemen are the main reason we have
our ducks is because we want duck eggs
obviously duck eggs only come from
female ducks when we bought our ducks we
bought what was known as a straight sex
run it means that the hatchery didn't
determine who the males and who the
females were there's ways to you know
flip a duck upside down and squeeze them
and figure out whether or not they're
male or female but I sort of missed my
window when it was actually a good time
to do it so I don't actually know how
many males and how many females we have
the plan has always been that we would
keep all the females and with the males
we probably keep you know a couple handy
for creating future generations but the
rest of them would go off to the freezer
so the act of sexual reproduction
amongst the ducks pretty
rough-and-tumble the fellas have a
pretty healthy appetite and so you know
you got to keep a certain ratio or else
if there's too many males two females
and a flock you can get some some real
violence you can really injure some of
the female ducks and it's just not good
for overall cohesiveness and a happy
flock when you have a grown duck there's
a couple different ways to tell the
difference some of this varies from
breed to breed for the khaki Campbell's
though some people say the color of the
bill some people say the color of the
little bean at the tip of their bill
some people say the color of their feet
some people say it's some of the the
winged feather colors some people say
it's a different
probably the most surefire way of
figuring out whether or not a duck is a
male or a female is whether or not they
get what's known as their sex feather
wouldn't sex feather make an awesome
name for a band the sex feather is this
little curly feather that pops up on the
back of a duck once they hit a certain
age and I just noticed the other day
that our ducks are starting to get their
sexes feather let me take you guys with
me and show you what a sex better
actually looks like all right so now
everybody's just had their morning meal
they've taken their baths now they're
sort of doing some grooming so there's
actually a decent time to try to find it
I know you're getting all worked up all
right this guy right here is a good
example of a sex rather see he is
unquestionably a Drake so you'll notice
the color of his wings also notice he
doesn't really quack but I will say if
I'm going off of looking at how many
duck have similar coloring on their
wings we probably do have a fair amount
of males in our flock he's got both the
sexes feather and the coloring on his
wings but overall with our ducks it's
still probably too soon to tell who's
male or who's female there's the this
guy right here he's the second duck with
this showing sex sex feather see him
he's kind of a heavyset gentleman
right there you hear how some of them
make sort of a rasp and some of them
make a more traditional quack I don't
know if it's gonna be later this month
or early next month but I'm hoping to
get a better read on who the males and
females are start tagging them so I
don't have to do this exercise every
time and then once I know that I'll
probably start separating them out and
I'll pick a day have a couple friends
over and we're gonna call now I know
I've heard from a number of you saying
gosh how can you do that you had these
guys when they were little fluffy balls
of cuteness and then you raised them all
the way up to this and now you're just
gonna kill them I mean you think about
like mass factory farming with you know
giant egg production they do this
horrible thing where they actually take
a lot of the rooster chicks and they
just kill them right out of the gate I
personally think that's awful they're
not even gonna get a shot to grow up
they're not even you get a shot to have
some sort of life these birds I feel
like I've had a great life living out on
pasture picking away at bugs eating
weeds having feeding frenzies with the
idea that now as they reach maturity I'm
going to use them for food I feel like
that sort of sort of behavior is just
what it means to be an ethical
meat-eater
I actually think as a society we'd be
better off if we were all more hands-on
with where we came from a little bit but
that's a little ways off I still have to
figure out who the males and females are
unfortunately just only a few of them
are showing their sex feathers so I
don't have as good information as I
might like but uh yeah we'll go from
there