A good friend gave me some Rouen Duck eggs to hatch. Well, my banty hens did a great job and I have 10 ducklings. Four are a dark brown all over and six are yellow with the dark brown on the tip of their tails and wings, and some dark brown stripes on their head. Can any of the duck guru's tell me which are the boys and which are the girls? Thanks a lot.

-- Karen Mauk (kansasgoats@iwon.com), May 27, 2001

Answers

Boy ducks can't quack, they kinda hiss, and the tail feathers on the boys will curl at the very end. That's the only way I could ever do it.

-- Cindy in KY (solidrockranch@hotmail.com), May 27, 2001.

Huh. I was under the impression that Rouen ducklings looked like mallard ducklings -- that is to say, all of them are yellow, with some dark markings, including that head stripe. I will be most interested to see what others have to say. Is your friend positive they were all Rouen eggs? Might the dark ducklings be a different breed?

-- Joy F [in So. Wisconsin] (CatFlunky@excite.com), May 28, 2001.

well I just got four ducklings-and all are a bit different. Most;y brown (one is lighter than the others) and they have yellow on parts of them and some stropes on the head. I don't have any idea if you can tell which is which at this age, except by sexing.

The one that is lighter brown is a bit smaller so I am watching carefully to see if maybe that one might be a she...but I would guess that is purely speculation.

As to the different colrings-I would say that might just be differences..we also have black australorp chicks-some have lots of white and gray patches, others are almost completely black. I have no idea if any of the chik markings will give us a hint about male or female. We are expecting some partridge rock chicks this week-and I am curious to see what they look like. And the goslongs we ordered too..

Have fun with your ducks and maybe let us know how it turned out- maybe the ones withless brown are females!

Sarah

-- Sarah (heartsongacres@juno.com), May 28, 2001.

We had two Rouen ducklings last year or, I guess, the year before. Both feathered out like hens, but a few months later the male's feathering changed to look like a male. The male will also take on the female coloring again when he has his molt. I don't think you can tell with the chick coloring either, but the first time you hear one quack, you will know the quackers are girls. Also, as mentioned above, after they are feathered out, the males will have a tale feather which curls up. Earliest indicator is the quacking.

-- mary, texas (marylgarcia@aol.com), May 28, 2001.

I don't know of anyway to tell the sex of rouens by color or size untill they are much older. Rouens look just like mallards and the drake will have a green head and curled up tail feather. The hens will be brown. It will take a few months before they start to quack or feather out. I have 8 new rouens that hatched out last week and they are all the same color. You might have some mixes I would think, or some mix in the background. Here is a pic of a day old rouen.


-- Kent in WA (kent@premier1.net), May 29, 2001.

THe pic above (how did you do that? include the pic URL?) looks exactly like the 10 wild ones that adopted us!

-- Brendan K Callahan (sleeping@netins.net), May 29, 2001.

the realy nice picture of the duckling is exactly the way I thought Rouen Ducklings should look at hatching. I have raised mallards and Khaki Campbells and Pekings and Muscovey(my personal favorite). I asked my friend if they could be mixed with some other breed of duck and she said no, but I have my doubts about it. I have 4 that are completely dark brown and the other 6 are not the striped markings I expected. Thank you all so much for yor help. I will ask my friend if the place she got her 2 ducks had other breeds of duck. karen

-- Karen Mauk (kansasgoats@iwon.com), May 29, 2001.

Let us know, too, how they feather out (what they look like then).

Interesting thing, we had mallard ducks, but lost our drake (male). We got two as replacements. One was a genuine mallard, but the other was a mix of some kind. We thought maybe Rouen and Pekin, as many of his babies grew up to be lighter colored and some had whitish patches. But the babies all looked like mallard babies (and, as I see here, Rouen babies). I think Rouens were developed from mallards, but I don't know what else was mixed in to develop them.

-- Joy F [in So. Wisconsin] (CatFlunky@excite.com), May 29, 2001.

When we bought the first Rouens, a few years ago, hubby was told by the fellow at the feed store, that you tell males from females by the way the stripe that goes through the eye is either solid, as in this picture, or not. The solid ones were supposed to be the drakes, so hubby got one like that, and four that had a broken stripe. Hah. Turned out to be 4 drakes and 1 hen instead. Can't tell you if the stripe had anything to do with it or not, though, as I didn't watch closely as they feathered out. It may have nothing whatsoever to do with sex. You can sure tell when they start quacking tho! Jan

-- Jan in CO (Janice12@aol.com), May 29, 2001.

The stripe is a new one for me. The pic is one I took about 5 weeks ago of 3 that I hatched out. As far as I can tell they all look to be be hens, so that stripe deal might not be too accurate. My drake rouen is jumping on all of them and driving me nuts. He has plenty of other females but seems to be picking on the youngest ones. I hear a big corruption by the pond and sure enough he is chasing around the little ones. Pictures are easy to post. You need to know a bit of HTML and have a site you can load your pictures to. If you look at the page source you can see how I did mine. There were several posts a few months back on how to add pics and links, so if you look under computers in the archives I'm sure you'll find something. If not let me know and I'll post here how to do it.

-- Kent in WA (kent@premier1.net), May 30, 2001.

Well i have you guys must have rouen pekin duck mix breed cus that what min e look like

-- Cory (cory_ralke@hotmail.com), July 22, 2001.

I don't know squat about ducks but I just bought two. I thought the folks told me they were Pekin but from all the pictures I've seen they look more like Rouens. One of my babies look just like the picture above. They other one has A LOT more black on him, not as much stripes, and a yellow chest. What does that mean? Anything? Thanks!

-- Jennifer (grannijen@aol.com), April 02, 2002.

LOL! There's not much point in trying to figure out which is which yet!

Mallard/rouen ducklings look pretty much alike until they moult. One easier way to tell is if the bill starts lightening up (losing the black/brown coloring) and looks a shade of green.

Rouens are exactly like mallards, just bigger.

Since all other breeds of ducks originally came from mallards, a lot of ducklings will look mallard for a while.

The difference in their voices is also a clue - but not with young ducklings. They all cheep, whistle, etc.

The only sure way to tell is to sex them. However, this can't be done at too young an age, and you have to find someone who really knows what they're doing. You can seriously injure a fowl doing this, to the point of causing it's death.

Keep in mind that they'll start losing those baby feathers - and what comes in may be a different color.

-- V (WraitheLadyA@yahoo.com), April 03, 2002.