Maybe you could make the animation by yourself or just don`t let the ducks get too near to the player (don`t place and let them walk into the gameplay area).
If you`ll buy it (I think it`s worth it): You should work with an LOD system for the ducks and/or reduce the texture size. A 1024x1024 texture and 1350 tris per duck (when placing ~10-15 ducks in the level plus some flying ravens and maybe one or two cocks) is a bit too much for us I think. Of course you could experiment around with it, but we should stay on the current performance level.
When I buy models I expect them to do what they be expected to be in real life (obviously within reason).
Would you buy a raven which didn't fly and hope for people to buy it just for distant GFX? Similarly with buying a human who has 101 attack and defening animations but no death animation?
There's a reason people buy these models, which is mainly because they can't create and animate them themselves. Asking them to do so for the sepcific use they require is somewhat (just my opinion here) absurd.
