Campbell/Swedish cross sexing

[jonhi]

Okay, so I have two 7 week duck(ling)s. Mother was a Blue Swedish with a slightly darkened head and middle gray body. Father was a Khaki Campbell. I'm trying to sex my two. Here are some observations:

Duck 1 (Quacky Chan) has the typical Swedish white chest patch but got some Campbell coloring with a beautiful chestnut brown body with a head that's only a hint darker than the body. I've seen iridescence/blue just peaking out on the back of the wings. Quacky is significantly smaller than (her?) sibling, and seems to honk/quack more. I heard the first voice breaks almost 3 weeks ago, and I'm pretty sure they sound more duck than drake, but I'm not certain and the blue wing marking is throwing me off, although mallard females have that as well as males. Quacky is the more adventurous about climbing on things and likes to get into the flower pots.

Duck 2 (Grey) could probably be mistaken for a pure bred Swedish blue. Looks almost identical to the mother. Grey is probably 150% the size of Quacky, but I think that might just be that (s)he has more Swedish and less Campbell? Metzer Farms says Swedish get 5-6.25 lbs while Campbells only get to 3.5-4.5 lbs, so that size difference seems to be in line with just being more like mom than dad and not sex. Has a couple white primaries that peak out on the tips of the wings. There also might be a tiny upward curve to the top tail feathers? But I don't think that it seems significant enough to sex. Still peeps more/quacks less frequently than Quacky. Is more okay with roaming the yard and is the first to run to get worms or dandelions and will sometimes push Quacky out of the little pool (which is just a tote and is getting a bit small for two of them). I don't know if that's just a size/dominance thing or if it's about gender.

Anyway, I'm sorry if this is clear as mud, but any insight would be helpful! I might be able to get up-to-date photos later today, if that helps.

 

[jonhi]

Okay, I found this link for voice sexing http://www.majesticwaterfowl.org/artquacks.htm referenced in another thread, and I think that Quacky is a girl. And if Grey isn't really quacking yet at 7 weeks that means probably a boy?

 

[Stipenvlerk]

most likely you are correct. Males sound raspy and are more quiet than the ladies

 

[TomCahalan]

All of the ducklings will get an extended black allele from their mom, along with a mallard pattern allele. This means that they will be solid colored with a white bib. If they don't have any dilution alleles then they will be black, otherwise they can be chocolate, blue, silver, lilac, or lavendar.

Khaki drakes have two copies of the recessive chocolate dilution allele. Blue-bibbed ducks have none. Your drake will pass one to each of his children. Your duck will pass her non-chocolate allele to her sons, and nothing to her daughters (since it is on their sex chromosome). Since the male ducklings have one chocolate and one non-chocolate allele, the recessive chocolate isn't expressed. This means that they won't get any of the chocolate color from their dad. The female ducklings will have one chocolate and no other allele, meaning that they will get the chocolate color.

Blue-bibbed ducks have one blue allele, and one non-blue (black) allele. The blue gene isn't on the sex chromosomes, so it won't help you determine sex. You ducklings can get 0 or 1 blue alleles from their mother and none from their father.

So based on all of this, here are the possible combinations for your ducklings:

Male black bibbed
Male blue bibbed
Female chocolate bibbed
Female lilac bibbed