How old do you slaughter muscovies?

I've kept pekins and other ducks before but not muscovies. How old do you do yours? I've got some that are about 12 weeks old and looking big, but I hear many people wait until they're five months

hey james

are you able to catch the ducks? Have you considered weighing the ducks? appearances can be deceiving with all the puff of the feathers/down.

Are you wanting to slaughter them?feed running out? or is this a more general inquiry?

haha so many questions!:)

hope your doing well

Hi Jordan,
Thanks for the reply.

I can catch them, but don't have a suitable scale. That is a thought though. I want to slaughter them for meat but don't want them to be undergrown. I have feed but need meat soon. It's not dire, but it would be nice to put some duck on the table

One thing we do around here.

If you have a human scale(house scale?) you can grab the duck and weigh yourself with the duck and than record it. than weigh yourself without the duck afterwards to see what the difference is.

I imagine once you knew how much they weighed it would make it easier to butcher one up for the table. I would say something in the range of 5+ pounds (live weight) would be worth the effort.

I once spent 1 hour killing an Indian runner duck. the dam thing weighed 1 pound when i was done dressing it!! haha i knew this before hand though.


If you have a bunch of ducks, no harm in sampling the ducks ahead of schedule:)

Harvest them at 20weeks.
But you can harvest between 12wk to 20wk.

The drakes should be about 11-15 lb., ducks 4-7 lb. live weight to be mature. I think for young birds, 12 weeks and then again about 20 weeks are your window of opportunity. Unless you plan on skinning them you want to make sure they are not growing new feathers. I would catch at least 2 and inspect their breast feathers carefully. Run your fingers through them, if they feel rough, bumpy or you see shorter feathers than the full ones wait a few weeks.
Ducks are a lot of work to pluck and the more you can help yourself the better. Enjoy, Muscovy are delicious.