Yep, just what the title says - if you don't wanna see some nasty leeches attached to duck eyes, turn back now!
So this seems like a pretty unique issue! I've had muscovies on my
pond for about a year now, and early on I would see this, but up until a few days ago I didn't actually understand what I was looking at. These leeches are attached to the inside of the ducks' eyelids, but to avoid being scratched off, they are somehow finding a way to attach under their third eyelid. At first my wife and I thought this was some sort of contusion to that third lid that had agitated it and filled with blood like a hematoma or something, but they would always be gone within about a day, and there didn't seem to be any lasting damage, so we didn't spend a lot of time with it. Plus when I just had adult ducks, it was only happening maybe once a month or less, so not something I was super worried about.
Now that I have chicks, it's happening with a LOT more frequency! Like 2-3 chicks will have them every day. The way I finally figured out what it was was a chick was scratching at the swelling, and suddenly it popped off! I picked up the blob, and of
course it was a squirming, blood filled leech! So I'm trying to attack this a little bit better; I'm grabbing the babies and the two of us are able to pull the leeches off with some effort - just getting them out from underneath the lid without damaging the duck's eye is the biggest hurdle. I'm working on a technique to squeeze the leech from the front of the eye to push it out from underneath, then grab it with tweezers and pull it off. I don't know if this is the right way to go about it, but I also don't want my ducks to start losing eyes if something else goes wrong. I've also read that these infestations can get leeches up inside their nostrils and in other mucosa areas where they can potentially suffocate the duck. I've had my share of mysterious duck deaths around here, especially suffocation ones, so I'm wondering if this has been a bigger problem than I realized.
So obviously pulling one leech off a duck doesn't address the
root of the problem. They live on a wild
pond that has been overrun with bullfrogs for who knows how many years (we've been here about 18 months now). So what do bullfrogs have to do with leeches on duck eyes? What I believe has happened is that the bullfrogs ran off all the
native species (we're in Washington, so bullfrogs are VERY invasive here), eaten all the fish, small frogs, and whatever else would eat a leech, but not the leeches, leaving that population obviously booming. I'm working right now to get some channel catfish in there to help take care of the rest of the bullfrogs, and am hoping they'll also eat the free leeches down to a more reasonable population. I'll also be adding more stocked fish to build a stable ecosystem once I feel like the tadpole and leech populations have dropped. Who knew that rehabilitating a pond would have such weird side effects!?
I don't know what I'm looking for with this post. Maybe some advice if anyone else has run into this, but with some quick googling it seems pretty unusual. Otherwise I guess I hope it just helps someone else with the same problem in the future! If you don't see the leech actually pop off it's very difficult to tell what the problem is. Plus it's gory and nasty and I wanna gross out some internet strangers. :P
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