Mallards?

emily2arceneaux

In the Brooder
Apr 27, 2016
16
0
24
South Louisiana
I came across a guy with a hatchery at the local tractor supply and he mentioned that he had mallards. I went and got 6 from him but I'm not quite sure they are all mallards. They made a week old yesterday (4-26-16) and they aren't all the same. I'm new with this so it's making me scratch my head. There is one who is much lighter than the rest but there is also one other who is much much smaller than the others. And also 2 of the others have different beaks. Can anyone help?
 
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Hmmm,

sometimes the breeds aren't quite what we think .. . .

Also, I think one needs to post a certain number of times before posting photo's....

So, perhaps you can describe your setup, and go into more detail describing the different ones.

Have they started showing you different personalities yet?

I may need to turn in soon. . . . just fyi
 
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Personality wise, they are always pretty wound up and love to make noise. This is my second round with ducks just the first time with mallards. We did rouen ducks last spring. I will try to get some better pictures and have them posted tomorrow. But I have done a little bit of research and there are quite a few breeds which all look the same as new babies. So I'm anxious about what exactly it is we have here.
 
I came across a guy with a hatchery at the local tractor supply and he mentioned that he had mallards. I went and got 6 from him but I'm not quite sure they are all mallards. They made a week old yesterday (4-26-16) and they aren't all the same. I'm new with this so it's making me scratch my head. There is one who is much lighter than the rest but there is also one other who is much much smaller than the others. And also 2 of the others have different beaks. Can anyone help?
Hmm, I can't see their bills in that pic, but the coloring/markings that I can see appear to be mallard. I had one that was a slightly lighter brown than the others and she turned out to have more light brown in her adult coloring and a lot of white/cream on her belly, but she's definitely a mallard (maybe another breed mixed in a few generations back?).
Also, two of them had a lot of pink on the sides of their bills and one's bill was all dark. Those differences made it easy to tell them apart.
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As for size, sometimes some are just bigger than others, or maybe were hatched a day or two earlier. My boys Rocky and Bullwinkle ended up with an entire pound of difference between them, which is a lot when you're only 2.5lbs to begin with, lol.
Feel free to post more pics of the cuties though!
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Here are my boys that were so different in size. I thought for a while the bigger one might be a Rouen instead but he topped out at about 3.5-4lbs.





My lighter colored one wasn't as drastic as yours - this is her in the middle. You can see the pink on the sides of their bills...the fella in the back had an all black bill.



So all in all, I'd say the sizes and bill colors are totally normal, but I'm curious about the much lighter ones. They may just turn out to be much lighter brown, or may end up being a mix of some kind?
 
They could possibly be mixed but of all my research I came across something interesting. I've found a golden mallard. It showed a picture of a hen with much lighter golden tones. Beautiful bird! And also my babies all have different feet. The Itty bitty has mostly pink feet. I will post a picture
 

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