SQ welsh harlequins? - Page 2

Thank You John,
I was going to point out your duck breed comparison chart thats lists the breakdown of the breeds offered by metzer as well as your average overall exhibition quality. For what it's worth, my daughter's 4H leader told me that a Metzer cayuga would have a very good chance at youth shows in our area. Cayugas are very under represented here. (Guess what I'm ordering next year....)

i love cayugas! i have 40 of them.

How do you think people get show quality birds in the first place?? 

For example by carefully selecting birds for breeding you can pair up a bird with great feathering and poor type with a another bird with great type- and over a few generations greatly improve the quality of the offspring produced and end up with a bird with great type and colour.  It can be a very slow process though taking years sometimes.  It also needs a large flock to choose from and an experienced person to pick the stock to pair together to try to get the right qualities.  From a pairing you may only get one or two from as many as 50 ducklings that are worth continuing with for the next year.

While it is unlikely to get a SQ bird from pet quality it can still happen in a very rare case. Its much more likely if the genetics of the birds you breed from are unrelated so that the genetics each pass on are not exactly the same.

i say anything is possible as long as you give it your best shot

I would let your babies grow up, read a lot, go to some shows that are similar to what you want to do with them and be ready to judge their quality next spring when they are grown up. Then breed your best birds - get help grading them - and see what happens. You will need to educate yourself, I'm sure it is possible to find quality, but you have to know it when you see it for it to do you any good.

Thanks John for answering and letting us know you are working on improving your flock overall. That's cool! Welsh Harlequins are awesome ducks, I loved mine and will eventually get more of them... if my overall numbers ever allow it! lol

One possibility, if you want show quality, is to evaluate your birds, and if they are OK quality, then purchase a really nice exhibition drake and start breeding up.

It's a lot easier to start with exhibition birds, but if you start with purebreds that don't have horrible flaws, you can introduce excellent bloodlines to your flock and then, by culling for quality, you can end up with some very nice birds.