Australian Spotted Ducks

[Duck Drover]

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).

 

[Duck Drover]

Here is another picture of the bluehead hen feathering out with the lighter "blue" spots.

 

[Duck Drover]

Here is more information about how Henry Miller was involved in developing the breed and there are some nice pictures as well.
http://www.holderreadfarm.com/photogallery/australian_spotted_page/australian_spotted_page.htm

 

[Duck Drover]

Here is a picture I took of a greenhead duckling with two bluehead ducklings.

 

[Duck Drover]

I did not find the e-mail but I did find this posted to confirm that the dilute works like the BBS color combinations with green being black, blue being blue, and silver being splash.

green to green = all green


blue to green = 50% each


blue to blue= 50% blue 25% green 25% silver


blue to silver= 50% each


silver to green = 100% blue


silver to silver= all silver

 

[Duck Drover]

The hen lost all of her ducklings on the nest and the two I assisted in hatching did not make it either. I know better than to assist but sometimes I just have to try. I gave her four ducklings and she seemed to be adopting them okay but we lost one this morning. The hen does not seem to know what she is doing yet because this is her first time as a mother. The ducklings also have the disadvantage of not being hatched under her for early imprinting so they are learning to be a family. I am tempted to take them away and let her try again but I also want to reward her and give her a chance to be a mother after she sat on a nest for a month. I have six more hens sitting on nests so hopefully they do better. It is still so cold and wet that this first batch had a disadvantage.

 

[SparrowHawkFarm]

I have raised many other duck breeds and the Spots are by far my favorite. I like the bantam size and they are beautiful. They are minimally invasive while getting rid of slugs, snails, grass spiders, and even mosquito larvae. I hose their poop into the grass and we have nice fertile black soil full of worms. They are great for the garden because they are not as hard on plants as chickens but they do love sugar peas and they will actually pull them down from a trellis to feast on them! They also like the flowers from squash so I have to go vertical with those this year. I gave my raised garden bed to my Silkies since I had my garden fenced in so now I am moving my garden closer to the house and I have cleared a large space that just needs landscape timbers and fencing that will allow the ducks to use it during the winter while I keep all the birds out during the growing season.

I put chicken compost in my raised beds and I am disappointed that the shavings did not break down as well as I had hoped. I used the rabbit manure in the strawberry planter but there is more where that came from. My neighbors prefer to use chemicals on their garden and they don't like the compost smell (the wet shavings have that pulp mill smell I don't like either) but I prefer to use natural fertilizers. The dirty duck water makes a great liquid fertilizer so I try to keep my duck bathing water close to my garden. With a new bigger garden space this year, I am looking forward to growing more than ever!

What colors do you have? Where are you located?

 

[Duck Drover]

What colors do you have? Where are you located?

I am in Washington state near Seattle.

 

[SparrowHawkFarm]

I am in Washington state near Seattle.

I think you are the only one selling Australian Spotteds on CL this year. =)
In 2012 I bought some Aussie spots from a guy in Vancouver Wa, he had beautiful Silverhead and Blue head for sale at the time with one of his hens nearly white. Wanted to see if he still breeds since he's near our area, but lost his contact

 

[Duck Drover]

I have been hoping to connect with other breeders but the only people I know who have them are not hatching ducklings now or ever. There are a couple of people who got breeding pairs from me but then lost their hen to predators so they just have a drake now. I also know someone who bought some nice breeding pairs from Holderread's and lost them to predators before she was able to get any ducklings from them.

My ducklings this year are outcrossed enough to pair with ducklings people bought last year but with the flock all together right now I can't recommend breeding a batch of ducklings together, especially since I end up setting entire clutches from a nest together at the beginning of the season instead of setting eggs from different nests together like I will do when we have a more steady supply of eggs. The hens seem to get better and better at hiding their nests when we find them but that has worked out well since my incubator space is limited. I have had six hens on nests already this season (one hatched her nest already) so I am going to offer hens with ducklings and an unrelated drake to people wanting to start a flock that way. I would like to get more people raising them to broaden the gene pool.

Be cautious about getting ducklings that may not be purebred since I made that mistake last year. Two of the drake ducklings I bought ended up too big for bantams so they went to live with a flock of Roens. They had been hatched from eggs that were purchased from someone else. I know what my greenheads will produce since this is my third year with them but I am going to grow out the blueheads and silverheads this year so I can see how they look and decide which ones to keep. I have a bluehead hen that has different markings and a greenhead drake that also does not look right to me so I am selling the pair to someone who wants to have ducks but is not necessarily going to be breeding them. Be sure to get show quality if you want to breed. The pet quality are still nice birds but they are better for people who just want slug eaters or pond decorations. If you are wanting to do alot of hatching to promote the breed, make sure you have birds that fully meet the breed standard. Holderread's has show quality and pet quality as well but their breeding stock is high quality. There are people who have called gray Call ducks Australian Spotted ducks and then they throw white offspring that shows they are Calls and not Spots. The silverheads are a light beige color with light silver spots but they should not look white. There is no white genetics in Spots, as far as I know, so anything that looks almost white would be a red flag to me. They might be pretty ducks but they are probably not purebred Australian Spotted ducks.

Due to the somewhat recent development of the breed, it is important to be selective and only keep birds that meet the standard. I have parted with some beautiful birds because they did not fit with a breeding program due to their color, even though I know they are purebred. I switch out my drakes every year so I can keep hens but now I am cutting back on greenhead hens so I can have all three color varities.