Female duck with male colouring!

[gizmo]

Can't understand why my mini appleyard female duck has grown male coloured feathers. Can anyone help? Is she having a sex change? 05 :lol:

 

[chrismahon]

How old is she Gizmo? Are you sure 'she' is a 'she', have you had eggs?

 

[dorsetduckowner]

how old is she and do you have male ducks in the flock or just females?

 

[gizmo]

She is two years old, and she laid eggs last year, and there are four drakes and six females.

 

[chrismahon]

Well in rare cases it can happen to hens when they suffer damage to an ovary -they turn into a pseudo-cockerel. Can't reproduce but otherwise exactly the same as a cockerel. So perhaps the same happens to ducks?

 

[rita]

i had it happen to my black rock chicken, she stopped laying and almost crowed not quite a proper crow but she/he tried, all very strange but i never had any cock birds running with the chickens.

 

[Lordcluck]

Like chrismahon says, this type of occurence is often due to an abnormality of the ovaries in a bird. It's not uncommon for it to happen in very elderly females that are no longer capable of breeding, and can be caused by a tumour on the ovary. There are recorded instances of female chickens changing sex and becoming fully functional, fertile males, but it is incredibly rare.