Duck Breed Focus - Australian Spotted Duck

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My daughter is working towards earning her Girl Scout Gold Award now but she is still active with her Silver Award project so we continue to do education and outreach with her ducks. I love it when people are interested in showing them because that is another way more people will learn about them. They are truly the best backyard ducks ever!

We are a bit mystified over our ducks with the white the background color. We sold yellow down ducklings (some are pictured above) to a trustworthy friend with the assumption that they would be silverheads because that has been the pattern so far. When we did voice sexing as hatchlings it sounded like 4 hens and 1 drake. One of the ducklings that sounded like a hen had a touch of a stripe on the top of the head which I thought would still be silverhead since it was so light and there was no stripe on her back but it would not be a total shock if she ended up being bluehead. What came as a shock is when I offered to take back 3 drakes (even though I did not guarantee sex on the ducklings because they were too small to vent sex) and none of them are silverhead. Two are greenhead and one is bluehead. Somehow three yellow down ducklings with high girl sounding peeps ended up being greenhead and bluehead drakes instead.

If I had not known this person for several years and consider her an honest person, I would say she slipped me drakes from some of her own hatches in order to get hens but I don't think she would do that. I do drake trades periodically with people I trust but I don't trade hens for drakes when it is a challenge to sell drakes without hens. In this case I wanted this friend to have white silverhead hens because she wants them so I just went ahead with the trade even though I can't figure out how three ducklings I thought would be silverhead hens ended up being greenhead and bluehead drakes.

I have no idea how I could have been so wrong about predicting color and gender when we raised out all of our yellow down ducklings last year and they were all silverheads. Our voice sexing has been mostly accurate so far (although I am relying on reporting to determine that since we sold the ducklings we voiced sexed as hatchlings) but I don't usually sell ducklings as sexed unless they are big enough to vent sex at about 1 to 2 weeks old. I am not sure how we got 3 out of 5 wrong but I am willing to admit I must have made a mistake in thinking the high peeps would be girls when they ended up being boys instead. There is just so much about these 3 ducks that baffles me and I only saw them when they left the nest and now again as adults. We gave them a different band color so we can keep track of them instead of pairing them out to start new flocks.

When we hatched our first white background hen I asked Dave Holderread what happened and he said it is the harlequin genetics that produces the striking color so I figured it was a good thing because he said it was good. They are a very beautiful colored duck with the high contrast so I figured we would keep her daughters to raise more (we sold the original hen and her sons because her bill was too dark). Now I am wondering if the hens with the white background are actually greenheads even though the drakes all came out silverhead.

Some of the yellow down ducklings we raised last year ended up tan and they look like what I expect silverheads to look like while some ended up with white backgrounds and darker spots like the original white background hen. With Australian Spotted hens their color is determined by their spot color and these hens have striking dark spots against the white background and blue band on the wing so maybe they are genetically greenheads even though they don't have the greenhead down color at hatching. I see why Holderread sold ducklings as "assorted" colors so he did not have to guess what the adults would look like based on the duckling down color. I like having color variety without having Calls so maybe the color came from being part Call and it is similar to the snowy Call color.

Fortunately we have been selective about selling our silverheads as I try to get better at predicting adult feather color from down but with this hatch coming out so unexpected I am going to have to hold off selling any more yellow down ducklings until I can figure out the genetics under controlled circumstances. Next year we are going to have to set up smaller breeding pens and see what the results are when we get yellow down ducklings. My friend will be breeding them too so I might have to try bringing some offspring back to raise where we can watch for color patterns to emerge and help me know what is going on genetically. They are all purebred Spots unless there was any cross contamination happening at Holderreads, which I experienced here for the first time this year and as a result I got rid of all our Calls forever (we only had them for comparison to educate people about the Spots and they were too loud anyway).

The color variety is only the icing on the cake when it comes to these rare ducks and they are all so striking no matter what color they are as adults. For people who name their ducks and like noting their individuality the color assortment is ideal and technically there is no show standard since they are still being exihibited as "other" in the bantam duck class until the SOP is officially recognized. The description of colors is clear in the drakes because it is based on drake head color but it gets more complicated to classify the hens with their wide range of background color and spot color. Maybe we will need to see about breeding "snowy" Australian Spotted ducks and if we get something that breeds true for many generations we can name them something less Australian, lol.

Does anyone else have Spots with the white background? I have a friend who had a white background drake feather out with a green head (I nearly bought him from her before I realized he ended up greenhead and not silverhead) and the mother to these three drakes is out of her flock originally so it may be a color mutation in that line, which was directly from Holderreads and I don't think there was any potential for cross contamination. When you have a breed that is already a mix of breeds it can be hard to know for sure without knowing where they come from so I only buy ducks when there are no other duck breeds on the property (except Holderreads) but that does not exclude wild visiting Mallard ducks that can mess things up too.

The mother hen had a lighter greenhead down color that was not bluehead and she and a sister have white background feathering in their rumps and tails so I am pretty sure the color mutation is coming from this line (all out of Holderreads originally). The dilema I have is whether to breed for it or cull it out and the ducks are so striking that I want to keep it. Then that creates the problem of predicting adult feather color from down color when selling ducklings but I can go to the "assorted" color scheme too as long as it does not oppose the SOP in any way. There are plenty of bird breeds that have non-standard colors so they can't be shown but they have a high level of marketability anyway because most bird owners do not show or even concern themselves with the SOP when purchasing birds.

I know my posts can get too long for the average reader but then I am really most interested in having a discussion with people who have information to exchange. My husband started a blog for my daughter years ago intended for sharing breed specific information but neither she nor I have time to keep up with maintaining a blog, which is why I am a member of BYC.
 
This is the mama hen and yellow down ducklings I expected to be silverheads, although her being greenhead did puzzle me because I thought greenheads could not have silverheads, only blueheads and silverheads can have silverheads. I think the hen has bluehead genotype with greenhead phenotype but that is based on the lighter down color she had that matures either distinctly bluehead or greenhead in the drakes (I call them splits but I don't know if that is technically correct in the way I use the term).

I don't know which of the three drakes I took back are out of this clutch or a second clutch (my friend got 3 of these ducklings and 2 from another hen) because I did not raise them and band them so now all three have the same band color. One of the two greenheads is whiter and the other one looks just like any other greenhead that came from dark striped down but I suspect both greenheads came from this hen because the other hen was bluehead. It is possible all three came from this hen if they are brothers. There is also the possibility that this hen hatched another hen's eggs in her nest and that is how she had what I thought would be silverheads even though she is greenhead. There are just too many variables to know exactly what happened.

Our new arrivals!

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This is the mama hen and yellow down ducklings I expected to be silverheads, although her being greenhead did puzzle me because I thought greenheads could not have silverheads, only blueheads and silverheads can have silverheads. I think the hen has bluehead genotype with greenhead phenotype but that is based on the lighter down color she had that matures either distinctly bluehead or greenhead in the drakes (I call them splits but I don't know if that is technically correct in the way I use the term).

I don't know which of the three drakes I took back are out of this clutch or a second clutch (my friend got 3 of these ducklings and 2 from another hen) because I did not raise them and band them so now all three have the same band color. One of the two greenheads is whiter and the other one looks just like any other greenhead that came from dark striped down but I suspect both greenheads came from this hen because the other hen was bluehead. It is possible all three came from this hen if they are brothers. There is also the possibility that this hen hatched another hen's eggs in her nest and that is how she had what I thought would be silverheads even though she is greenhead. There are just too many variables to know exactly what happened.
Gorgeous ducklings and mama.
 
These are our ASDs.
 

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I know this is an old thread, but I wanted to let people know I got three pairs of Australian Spotted Ducks from Duck Creek Farm in Montana. They shipped them and we are satisfied. All are very pretty. Will post more on current threads, once we see how they lay.
 

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