You guys are confusing this with the Ole Beaver's farm raised mallards he shoots, not sure he has actually seen a wild mallard but I will assure you to say there are only two curl feathers on a mallard like he originally said in his first post is dead wrong. If the feathers are split you could make out 2,3, 4 or whatever you want to see.
Beaver let the man enjoy his harvest, your wrong anyway.
Enough with pounding the beaver again, lets go second part of the season.
First you need to watch this video, hopefully it will soften your heart a little
you reading between the lines. Of course you can have one feather split into 2 curls. But when you pluck em out of their butt you will only have one feather and not 2.
They appear to have two curls, usually, but each curl is made of two interlocking feathers so, in reality, there should be four curl feathers if you count them. Occasionally a feather will not fit properly with its match so there will appear to be extra curls even though the number of feathers is the same.
Once in a blue moon you might find a drake with three complete curls - meaning that there are actually six curled feathers. (I've only seen one of those in almost 37 years, so it isn't common.)
I don't think the number of curls means anything. A mallard drake that's old enough to be moulted out is going to have a full set of curls.
Anything other than four curls (which should fit together to make two) will be due to unusual genetics or to a damaged feather follicle that can't produce a perfectly matching curl.
Or ... pinfeathers.
And what the heck is a wild mallard?