Australian Spotted Ducks

Duck Drover said:

The greenhead is the standard color while bluehead is a dilute of the greenhead and silverhead is a dilute of the bluehead. I know Millie Holderread sent me a color breakdown for what colors produce what colored offspring and if I recall it was very similar to breeding BBS (blue, black, splash) colors with the dilution factor. It was in an e-mail awhile back so I would have to look it up. The confusing part is the split genetics where the genotype is not identical to the phenotype. I will keep it simple and hopefully it will make sense.

The greenhead hen will have dark spots, the bluehead will have lighter spots, and the silverhead has such light spots that she looks more cream colored.

The greenhead ducklings have a down color that looks almost black, the bluehead down color is lighter, and silverhead down is basically yellow so it looks like it will be a white duck but it will get a light tan color.

In the drakes, greenheads have green malard colored heads, blueheads have gray colored heads (blue feather color means gray in birds) and silverheads have a light silver colored head.

It can be difficult to tell color in pictures, especially in sunlight. I had looked at a number of pictures online before I had my first blueheads and silverheads last year and then it all clicked. The same is true for the porcelin color in Silkies until I visited Karen and saw her Silkies, then it was perfectly clear to me. I still don't see a huge difference in lavender (self-blue) versus blue except that lavender looks like a light blue to me.

I have a number of greenhead hens and some are dark brown while others are more tan so the color is a range and not always clearly delineated. If I remember correctly, you got two of my lighter hens. I asked Dave Holderread about the color variations when we met last week and he said the more contrast the better. He also said not to get too caught up in show standards, to follow advice Henry Miller gave him and focus on the main identifying characteristics of a breed.

Above is a picture of one of my hens that looks white in her tail (visible right after clipping wings) while the picture below shows a bluehead hen feathering out with the distinctive blue spots instead of the darker spots of the greenhead.

The younger duckling behind her is a drake that started out with "blue" down but feathered in "green" and has a green head in his nuptial phase (drakes look like hens during their eclipse phase).

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