Should you get male or female ducks?
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Should you get male or female ducks or both? How many ducks should you get in your first flock?
Male or female ducks: choosing the right sexes and number of ducks for your backyard flock
If you’re a newbie to the world of raising ducks, a quick terminology lesson for clarity:
- mature male ducks are called “drakes”;
- mature female ducks are called “ducks” or “hens.”
This terminology can get confusing when you’re referring to a group of male and female ducks as simply “ducks,” while simultaneously referencing drakes (males) and ducks (females). We’ll try to be crystal clear when referring to male or female ducks so as not to cause confusion.
Below are seven questions you’ll want to answer BEFORE deciding: a) how many ducks to get in your backyard flock, and b) the number and ratio of male and female ducks in your first flock:
1. Why are you raising ducks?
There are no right or wrong answers here. Answers might include:
- for pets,
- egg production,
- meat production,
- breeding,
- garden or small farm helpers,
- animal rehab,
- some combination of the above.
2. How many eggs do you need per day to meet your and your family’s food needs?
Most duck parents we know (us included) initially became interested in ducks for egg production purposes.
As you might have guessed, it takes one hen to make one egg in a 24 hour period during the months when they’re laying. So if your family of four needs four eggs per day? You guessed it: you’ll want at least four females.
Keep in mind that while many breeds of ducks can outperform chickens on egg production, they’ll still ideally need to take at least several months off each year so their bodies can recover from the physiological toll of egg production. This break also helps them produce more nutrient-dense eggs when they’re laying. If you want healthy, long-lived ducks, don’t push them to the max on egg production with their dietary regimen. Also, keep in mind that prolific egg layers are more prone to health problems, which isn’t ideal for folks like us who value our animals’ health more than their productivity.
3. Do you plan to breed ducks?
If you plan to do duck breeding or raise your own ducklings, you’ll obviously need to plan on having at least one male in your flock. Related: Read our step-by-step how to raise ducklings guide.)
Keep in mind that the ideal male-to-female ratio in a mixed-sex flock is a minimum of three hens per every drake. Break this rule and your hens have an increased likelihood of getting over-mated, and/or injured.
4. How much space do you need to have in your coop/duck house?
As we wrote about in 17 tips to keep your ducks safe from predators, it’s essential to have a safe well-built duck coop in place BEFORE you get ducks.
It’s also essential that you have a secured run or fenced in backyard with a 6’+ tall fence (or both a run and fenced yard). That’s because predators will kill your ducks if they’re not protected — especially nocturnal predators like raccoons and possums. Yes, even if you live in the city.
If you’re in the process of building your duck coop or you already have one built, you might be wondering how many ducks your coop can hold? Answer: each duck will need 2-6 square feet of space inside their coop/duck house, depending on breed.
Smaller breeds like Welsh Harlequins or Cayugas can deal with 2-3 square feet of space each. Larger breeds like Pekins and Silver Apple Yards will need 4-6 sq ft. If in doubt, plan to build a larger duck coop than you think you need. Providing more space is especially necessary if you live in a colder climate where your ducks might be spending more time in their coop due to heavy winter snows.
More space will keep your ducks happy and also allow for room in case you decide to get more ducks in the future. (Warning: ducks are a gateway drug to more ducks.)
Perhaps these duck space requirement parameters also help you realize that you might not have the room in your yard for as many ducks as you want… That’s a good realization to have BEFORE you get ducks!
5. Do you have plenty of protected outdoor space for your ducks?
Ideally, your ducks can get a minimum of 6 hours of outdoor time in the sun in a safe fenced in area to play, swim, and forage. This helps keep them healthy and happy.
For reference, we have a 75′ x 20′ fenced back yard where our 11-duck flock spends their day, and a 60 square foot duck coop (aka Waddle Inn) where they spend the night. There are three internal partitions in our coop, which help us anytime we need to integrate new flock members, separate our drakes from our hens, etc. We also let our flock out of their backyard in the evening to forage with us while we garden and harvest food.
In our space, a flock of 11 ducks (8 females, 2 drakes, and one hilarious intersex duck which we’ll discuss later) feels just right. This quantity of ducks and male-female ratio provides:
- Eggs – More than enough eggs for our family for most of the year, with plenty to share with family, friends, and neighbors from spring through summer.
- Optimal care – a small enough flock that we can easily provide each of them with excellent care, develop them as socialized pets, and keep a close eye out for any injuries or illnesses.
- Breeding potential – We want at least one drake in our flock so we have the option to occasionally hatch our own ducklings. For instance, Pippa Luckinbill (one of our hens) was the love-duckling of Sir Winston Duckbill and Svetlana, a legendary female in our flock who died in 2018.
If you’re a new duck parent, we recommend starting small and simple… No more than 3-4 new ducks in your flock until you’ve got 1+ year of duck parenting experience under your belt. You’ll probably also want to start with an all-female flock rather than a mixed-sex flock.
6. Do you have or can you build a single coop with a separate enclosure? Or two coops?
If you get a drake(s), you’ll need some way to keep him separated from your hens at night so the hens don’t get over-mated or injured. We found this out the hard way many years ago with our first hen, Lady Margaret Thrasher, who was over-mated in her coop at night, thus sustaining an injury on the back of her head (that’s where the top duck grabs on to the bottom duck with its bill while mating). Today, our coop has multiple internal partitions to keep our drakes separated when needed.
During the day for much of the year when drake hormones are running high, we keep them in their own smaller enclosures made from temporary fencing where they can see and interact with the rest of the flock, but not have physical contact with them. This is generally from late winter (when daylight hours start ticking up) until late summer/early fall (when daylight hours are ticking down). Otherwise, they can be too aggressive with our hens and interrupt flock cohesion.
7. Are you prepared for a drake?
Over the past 6 years, we’ve had three drakes. We actually had them all at the same time (by accident).
Once our first three drakes hit sexual maturity at around 20 weeks of age, they spent their days trying to mate the females and fighting with each other to be top drake. When we set up fenced enclosures to separate them, they spent their days trying to rip at each other through the fencing. Don’t make this mistake!
Key takeaways: If you get multiple drakes in a mixed-sex flock, you’ll need to plan to pen them off from each other and the females, or you’ll end up with injured drakes and likely injured hens. You also need to make sure you have adequate space for the number of ducks you plan to get.
Male or female backyard duck FAQs
Does it ever make sense to get an all-drake flock?
If you raise male ducks with no females around, they’ll typically get along well rather than fighting each other. No, we don’t have direct experience to draw on here, but we’ve heard this information firsthand from quite a few credible sources over the years. If you have no interest in eggs and you just want pet ducks, you might actually consider getting an all-drake flock.
Why? Drakes require less care. No extra calcium supplements, feed considerations, etc. They also tend to live longer and are less prone to medical complications since egg laying can cause a host of reproductive and other medical problems.
Can I just get one duck?
You should never get just one duck! Ducks are social animals. They need constant
If you temporarily only have one duck due to a flock mate dying, make sure the surviving duck has a mirror so it feels like there’s another duck there until you’re able to get another real duck companion. A stuffed animal to befriend and cuddle up against while sleeping might also be appreciated until help arrives.
Will ducks get along with my chickens?
Yes, ducks and chickens are often raised together, and they can get along great. However, raising multiple poultry species concurrently creates unique challenges.
For one, chickens and ducks have specific nutritional needs unique to their species — especially when they’re young.
Also, anytime you’re introducing new animals to each other, handle the integration process carefully and slowly. For instance, you might want to set up temporary fencing so they can all see each other and get used to each other over a 2-3 week stretch, without being able to make physical contact.
Once they appear to be used to each other, allow for supervised commingling. That means you’ll need to be present for the introduction and prepared to break up any serious fights. A duck bill is unlikely to cause much injury to a chicken, but the sharp beak of a chicken could easily injure a duck.
Finally, housing ducks and chickens in the same coop can be difficult since chickens roost while ducks stay on the ground. You don’t want your ducks to get pooped on, so separate coops for each species would be ideal.
Our recommendation? Gain at least one year of experience with one poultry species before adding the extra complication of raising additional species together.
Hopefully, you now know the ideal number and sex of ducks for your first flock!
Being owned by ducks comes with a lot of responsibility, but it also comes with constant rewards such as:
- delicious and nutritious duck eggs (see how duck eggs compare to chicken eggs),
- constant laughter,
- companionship and more.
Thanks for planning ahead to be good duck parents!
KIGI,
I’m just wondering did your drakes fight even when they were penned up separately from the hens or only when they were all in together? I recently got ducklings from a friend who it turns out does not know how to correctly vent sex. I thought I was getting 3 hens but at 9 weeks based on their voices I’ve got 3 drakes. I have a lot of space and I’m really enjoying raising them so I’m going to try to get some females that I will buy from a hatchery where I will be certain of what I’m getting. I know it can be really hard to rehome drakes except to people who want them for meat so I think I will end up keeping them as well. I’m trying to figure out what kind of setup I will need to make that work. Thanks for your help!
Great question, LJ! Once we saw our drakes were fighting each other relentlessly and over-mating the girls, we put them in separate but adjoining pens during the day. The pens were made of temporary fencing. Almost immediately, they then started reaching through the pen fencing to fight each other, pulling out feathers, etc. So we then had to put enough distance between their pens so they couldn’t reach each other.
We just got 6 additional ducks from a rescue operation, and one is a male Indian Runner. We’re not sure his age, but he is (at least for now) far less aggressive than any Welsh Harlequin drake we’ve had — or males of any other breed we’ve been around. But we can’t make any generalized claims about drake behavior variability by breed.
We have heard from other people that if you have an all-drake flock, they’re not aggressive with each other since there aren’t females around to get worked up over and fight about. Since we’ve never had an all-drake flock, we can neither confirm nor deny that claim. Ha.
So, if you plan to keep all three of your drakes, you *might* be able to keep them from fighting each other by NOT getting females.
If you do get females, you’ll need to plan on having separate enclosures for your males during the day and partitions in your coop to keep them separated from each other at night. (Or separate coops, but that’s more expensive.)
One bright spot is that drakes’ hormones diminish as sunlight levels decrease in the fall, so their behavior is not problematic from fall through late winter. Each year for the past 10 years, our drake is allowed to fully commingle with the flock during that time window, up until we notice his behavior starting to change as sunlight hours increase in late winter/early spring.
Hope this helps and good luck!
My husband and I found 8 duck eggs in our backyard (from two wild mallards that would frequent our pool every spring). The momma duck left the eggs unattended for about a week when we had construction done. Long story short, we found the 8 cold eggs in our bushes by the pool, and a squirrel had already eaten 4 eggs (momma duck laid 12 eggs total). So we were forced to rescue the 8 eggs and ended up having a successful hatch of all 8! Since we weren’t expecting to get ducks for a while (my husband always wanted them/he thinks these eggs we found were a “gift from above”), we had to quickly research how to care for ducklings. We gave 3 of the ducks away to a friend who owns a farm with her own pet ducks and we currently have 5. We thought we had 2 boys and 3 girls, but one of the “girls” decided to develop a green head. We built a super safe duck hutch for them and are almost done building a 9ft round pond for them. (Hutch and pond will also have an enclosure built around them) We don’t want to give away any more ducks because we are super attached to all of them-so what is the best way to house them to keep them from hurting each other? Should we keep the two girls in the large hutch and buy 3 separate hutches for the boys? And do we only have to separate the drakes and hens during mating season or all year round?
Hope these questions aren’t silly! Bear with us, we are new duck parents. And we don’t really care about egg production-these guys are first and foremost our pets. (Eggs are a bonus).
Thanks in advance for any advice you could offer.
Hi Amanda! Before diving into answering your questions, one thing you may want to consider is re-wilding your Mallards once they mature. They’re wild birds, not bred, and that may ultimately be what’s best for them. The other thing to consider is that unlike flightless bred ducks, Mallards can and will fly, which will make them more difficult to keep. If you decide to release them, you could then get a sexed run of bred ducks, and not have problems (which will make things far easier for you, especially as first time duck parents). Obviously, it’s your decision either way, just wanted to introduce that possibility for your consideration.
With your male-to-female ratio (3:2), things are going to be a bit tricky, as you already know. Young drakes are going to be particularly aggressive for the majority of the year; they will calm down during the coldest months. Some people also say that drakes calm down as they age. We have an eight year old drake who is still very aggressive when his hormones are turned up.
With multiple drakes, you can build a large single run and coop, but you’ll want to have partitions within the structures to keep them separated from each other – 1/2″ wire meshing or something similar so they can’t reach through and grab each other.
Hope this helps, even if it’s not good news. 🙂
Hi Duck friends,
So I thought I had two females. That’s what I ordered from Metzer farms but I know they’re not always correct. I have White Duclaire’s so they look identical.
Penny, the bossy one has been more prone to charging our dogs from a few months old. Then at about 4 months old Penny started to mount Poppy. I read that sometimes two females will do this if there’s no Male in the flock so I didn’t worry too much.
Now, at 6.5 months old the mounting is becoming more frequent. Poppy recently started limping due to a non-visible leg injury and her Ming feathers definitely look scuffed.
We also have never found more than one egg per day since they started laying. The evidence seems to suggest we have a drake on our hands which is too much for our one female. Should we get another girl or two???
Thanks so much for sharing all your knowledge. You guys are the best!
I don’t know what I’d do with at your guidance!
Hi Zoe! Thanks for your kind words. Sorry to hear you’re having difficulties there.
Yes, female ducks will still have sex with each other – ours do it regularly even though we have a drake around. So that’s not an accurate way to determine their sex, as you said. One egg a day would seem like a pretty good indicator that you have a mixed-sex pair, but even that may not be definitive given their age (some ducks won’t start laying until Month 6 ) or if the duck has hormone or reproductive tract issues.
Let’s try two other things to sex your ducks:
1) Does Penny have curly drake feathers on the top base of her tail? If so, “she” is a male.
2) Are both ducks’ voices the same? Female ducks are the loud honkers; drakes make a raspy blurp-blurp sound. If Penny doesn’t honk but instead makes raspy calls, “she” is a male.
As for mating and/or over-mating injuries: if the ducks are having sex on the ground or in a shallow pool wherein the bottom duck (Penny) has to stand while being mounted, leg injuries are much more likely to happen. Our girls always go to their pool for sexy time, and the pool is deep enough so that they’re fully floating throughout each glorious escapade – thus no foot/leg injuries ensue. Is it possible for you to provide a deeper pool? Adding more ducks to your flock may help reduce Penny’s sexual focus on Poppy, but if the bottom ducks aren’t able to float during sexy time, the problem of leg injuries is likely to persist.
Do you make your own duck diapers or are they available online?
What a great idea!
Hi Susan! No, we don’t make our own duck diaper harnesses or inserts. Here’s our article (and instructional video) all about how to diaper a duck, which includes the exact materials/vendors we use: https://www.tyrantfarms.com/how-to-diaper-a-duck-with-instructional-video/
Can I get a single duck if I have other pets or does it need to be around other avian creatures??
Great question, thanks! We’d strongly recommend getting a second duck for the simple reason that ducks will be happiest if they have another member of their own species around. They can and will bond to another pet (or person) if that’s the only game in town, but there’s no love like duck love.
I have two Drake Pekin ducks who are 20 weeks old. They are starting to become aggressive with me. Are they craving female company? Have I made a mistake having only males? I don’t really have the space for a large flock which is why I thought two would be fine.
Advice please.
Hi Vanessa! Can you provide specific examples of what you mean by aggressive? Typically, with no females around, drakes should be relatively calm and make good pets. If they’ve never been in the company of a female duck, they don’t know what they’re missing. Given the information you’ve provided, it seems like a good idea for you to have two drakes, assuming you’re not interested in egg production.
Hi, we also learned the hard way that the mating between the male and female duck lasts through the night, so we are separating them to see how that goes. My hope is when they are out foraging in the yard, they can be civil and the male will not try and make up for “lost time.” My question is, how much time does your drake spend on his own during the day? We do have two coops we could separate them in. They are a nice pair but the over-mating is really too much for our female’s neck, and we don’t have the space for more females. Thanks.
There are seasonal variations in a drake’s libido, as well as variations by age. A younger drake will be much more aggressive than a 5+ year old drake, however our 7 year old drake is still quite the ladies’ man. Also, from late winter through summer, your drake will likely be far more sexually aggressive than he will be from late fall through mid winter. At present, we keep our drake in a separate coop at night. During the day, we allow for a quick conjugal visit in the morning, otherwise he’s in a separate fenced run. However, there’s about a 2-3 month window in the cold months when our drake is able to be fully integrated with the females, although we still do keep him in his own coop at night just to keep him comfortable with and used to those accommodations.