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lovely Daffy, the smiling duck in my avatar picture is not very well
s/he (not sure yet!) has, as you can see, a twisted beak, like a smile. she has always been a loner but never struggled with the beak.

however, she is now looking thin and has got quite muddy and is reluctant to swim.
we "dipped" her to get the mud off and clean her beak, her feathers seem oily enough. she retreats to the house & is wanting to stay lying in the corner.

any suggestions as to what I could tempt her to eat?
they have pellets, corn & mixed flakes, and grass,hay & greens.

thanks

too late folks, little Daffy has gone to the great duck pond in the sky

So sorry LBD that Daffy has died I'm afraid I couldn't help as I know nothing about ducks and hoped you'd get some help from somebody here, so sorry.

thanks Spider8.
where there's livestock there's dead stock (doesnt make me feel too much better though!) ;)

Sorry to hear that; ducks are lovely, aren't they?

Can't offer any answers to your ex-avian but a few years ago, a dead mallard was in our garden. No marks on it, well fed, not old. Strange. Not seen such a thing before or since.

little blue duck wrote:lovely Daffy, the smiling duck in my avatar picture is not very well
s/he (not sure yet!) has, as you can see, a twisted beak, like a smile. she has always been a loner but never struggled with the beak.

however, she is now looking thin and has got quite muddy and is reluctant to swim.
we "dipped" her to get the mud off and clean her beak, her feathers seem oily enough. she retreats to the house & is wanting to stay lying in the corner.

any suggestions as to what I could tempt her to eat?
they have pellets, corn & mixed flakes, and grass,hay & greens.

thanks

Sorry didn't see this til just now, and so sorry about your little duck

I had something similar happen to one of my ducks last spring. No-one knew what it was, everyone suggested worming her (the panacea for all ills to many people it seems) but I was unconvinced.

I did bring her round by quarantining her with her best friend another girl, and feeding them on chopped hardboiled egg chickweed and ground oatmeal with a few live mealworms mixed in.

I think she was being bullied and kept away from the feed by the dominant pair, but once ducks have stopped eating it seems incredibly difficult to get them started again. I think it was the live mealworms that really did it

If chickens are being bullied away from the feed you can put in another feeding station, or scatter the wheat more widely, but ducks are such flock animals that it doesn't seem to work for them. Also I think if you quarantine them on their own the just get depressed and die anyway.

I know it is too late for your poor little one, but it might help if something similar happens again.

All the best
Sue

hi Sue
thanks for that.
I try to spread out the food as much as poss (rats permitting!) and she seemed to go in for pellets, but hey ho.

I know what you mean about quarantine, its so hard to decide what to do for the best....

:)