Ducks that lay colored eggs?

[bibliophile birds]

Quote:
egg color is genetic. the reason you get such crazy variety is because, unlike chickens, ducks haven't been breed for egg color. since most people have never seen a duck egg, let alone eaten one, the market doesn't demand that they be uniform. breeders have concentrated more on breed conformation and meat qualities.

it would be a really interesting project to work on though. hmm... i'm getting some blue Cayugas in a few months........... uh oh, the last thing i need is another new obsession.

 

[Dances with Ducks]

I hope they never become standardized to one color. One of my fantasy projects would be to be able to sell a rainbow of colored duck eggs in a carton.

 

[92caddy]

Here is a pic of what my black cayuga ducks lay.........

 

[bibliophile birds]

Quote:
i didn't mean all standardized to a single color, i meant that it's not so easy to say "oh, you have {breed x} ducks so you will get {y} colored eggs, but if you get some {breed a} ducks you can also have {b} colored eggs."

as you can see from 92caddy's Cayuga eggs, there is huge variety in the single breed. with chickens you know what you are getting (although the tone varies from bird to bird). for example, you know Orpingtons lay brown eggs, Andalusians lay white eggs and Marans lay DARK brown eggs. if breeders were selecting for eggs, you would know what breeds to purchase to get a particular egg color.

92caddy: those are beautiful! now i'm even more excited to get my Cayugas!

 

[92caddy]

All of my cayugas layed gray, lt. gray and green eggs til one day I was at a swap and a lady I knew that I had gotten my ducks from had a pr for sale, so I got em ASAP and man was I all excited when I found that black egg in the pen a few days later. She is my pride and joy of all of my ducks. The lady found out she sold the wrong duck and asked me to sell her back to her, I was like NOOOO way, shes all mine.

 

[clucking cuties]

I am really interested in eggs color for both ducks and chickens. I know that there are many factors that can influence this, both genetic and dietary. My chickens lay a rainbow of dark dark brown (Marans) to blues, pinkish, green,(Easter eggers) and now teal to brownish greens from my F1 generation olive eggers.

Up until now my ducks, whom I greatly enjoy in every other respect, have been a bit of a disappointment in the egg color category. I did get a few passably black eggs from my Cayuga girls, but this late in the season (February) the best that I get is a light to medium gray. My Blue Swedish, Rouen, Peking and Khaki Campbell girls have given loads of delicious cream to white eggs. I did get one egg around last Halloween that had an orange tint to it, but it must have been a fluke (something she ate; maybe a leftover bit of something with orange frosting??) because I have never seen another one. We give table scraps sometimes to our birds, so something may have contained some dye or something. I have no clue, what happened, but to my great disappointment it was a one time event.

I ordered some late season Silver Apppleyard ducks (eBay) and hatched them out in August. They were all white eggs. (Yes, I am a sucker for hatching eggs.) I did not have a good hatch, and only two of twelve survived. One turned out to be a drake I named "Huey" and the other one was a duck named "Huette". Appleyards are adorable ducks, they always seem to look a bit sideways at you, and I was hooked on how cute and tame they became.

Anyway as Huey grew, I began to suspect that perhaps he was not a purebred Silver Apppleyard. He looked great as a youngster, but now he is indistinguishable from my Rouen drakes. Huette was always a bit darker, but looks more like a typical Apppleyard. Just this last week I started to get blue green eggs. I have gotten 4 of them. 3 of them we ate, but I kept the best one to preserve. It can only be Huette as the other girls have all been laying for a while.

My faith has been restored, there is such as thing as "duck egg blue". I am even considering putting Huey and Huette together and incubating her eggs. I am guessing that they had different duck mothers but may have had the same drake as a father.



Huey as a youngster...don't have a pic of Huette right now, if anyone is interested I'll post one:

 

[okiegirl47]

I have a duck that I was told was a Blue Swedish when I purchased her but I really think she is a Cayuga. She laid her first egg today and it is a bluish green. I took a picture but it' really hard to see the true color. I'd really like to know what breed she is. I know the
Cayuga lay dark gray or black eggs but this girl doesn't look anything like a Blue Swedish to me.

 

[knightie]

I've had Cayuga's for a while... good ones lay black <then grey and down to white as the season goes) or they start grey.... or hatchery onces may even start as white... never seen anyother color from a cayuga.... but it could be a mixed bird (I've had pekin cayuga mixes... they looked like swedish... sorta.

Is the bird in questions all black with green highlights?

 

[nduff2004]

This happened all of a sudden, both have been laying cream colored eggs and today I feel like Easter!!!

 

[angelbeya]

My little mallard lays greenish grey to cream colored eggs!