Hi,

We have an adult drake cherryvalley (cross with a pekin and indian runner). We have had him from an egg and he is now 2 years and 3 months old. He has been fine up until about 7 months ago when he had had a type of spasm. This spasm then happened again a while later and kept occurring with weeks in between of it not happening. Because it wasn't happening regularly we thought it my have been something he had eaten that was disagreeing with him. But since christmas this has been happing more often.

When he has a spasm he streches his head and neck backwards over his back, walking backwards and sometimes he falls over.

He has also had a few of these spasms whilst he is in the bath where he almost drowned.

He was a very white duck but over the last two weeks his feathers seem very yellow in places.

I have had to change his feed as I was feeding him on organic growers pellets and the pet shop I buy them from cannot order them in anymore, so he is now on a standard layers/growers pellet mix.

He always has fresh water and food down, and he is very aggressive at times (pinches) which I always put down to maturity.

We are planning to take him to a specialist vet which is quite away from us (there are no local vets that deal with ducks).

In the mean time can anyone identify what it could be or has anyone heard of or experienced something similar with water fowl before.

Many Thanks

Jo, Mike and Alfie the duck