MALLARD THREAD...not rouens, Mallards!

[Zombified]

Thanks if you were talking to me.

Haha yes I was talking to you!

 

[fallenangel79]

Hey! guys here is my mallard she looks really fat and short in that pic but she is really small and long.

she is cute

 

[Zombified]

Pyrrhos!

There's a giant hole in the ground because we're finally continuing to work on the pond. It got wayyyyy too hot to be digging out there, so we had to take a break. We're going to have an aquaponics system to grow veggies for the family, that way we can spend the money on buying local, hormone/chemical-free meat(as right now, it's just too expensive, but if we don't need to buy veggies, then that's a huge portion of our spending cut out). We don't mind if the ducks munch on the leaves or the bottom veggies, either, since the food is really only being grown for us.

The hole in the ground was a big hit, though, lol. Everyone was super excited to "help" us dig!

 

[fallenangel79]

that is cool

 

[chickenboy190]

Haha yes I was talking to you!

Thanks.

 

[chickenboy190]

she is cute

Thanks so are yours.

 

[cskotek]

She doesn't need to know they aren't biologically hers lol!

 

[kswaterfowl]

I'm sure that there isn't a difference, I'm not very good with breeds. I was just confused about the different colorings some people were showing. Like the blue fawn mallard and snowy mallard or something, sorry to confuse you. i think that those are just mixed breeds though.

Mallards are accepted by the American Poultry Association and the American Bantam Association in Gray & Snowy, they also come in white, blue fawn and pastel (as mutations to wild type patterns.) Though not accepted varieties. They snowy and gray can be bred together easily and we've done it several times. Our original birds weren't dusky based snowy birds (In my opinion) So we bred them back and forth with gray to improve color until we bought the Wild Plum birds, and crossed those in.
I am looking myself for a line of grays that have the more extreme bill length. We have some snowy's this year out of our original Wild Plum bloodline that have extremely long bills, but they also have black saddles, which we prefer not to breed from, but their bill length is winning out over color simply because it is so long. Our original Snowys were the product of a breeder from Ohio and Michigan, and then we worked our way adding Wild Plum birds in. We purchased a pair of grays from Butch Gunderson at the last Crossroads show to work with in our gray pens, but they were "WILD" birds. We couldn't keep them from beating themselves in the runs each time we tried to feed them, we finally put them in low runs with plywood over the top to keep them from beating their heads on the wire, and it helped, but they would never settle down enough to mess with, we never could have shown them, and I am hoping to eventually find hatching eggs to hatch and raise with our calmer birds in hopes they will be easier to keep. Butch's two both ended up escaping from the pens at different times when we opened the doors to feed, so we gave up on them, our grays now are directly out of the Lacy Allen lines, they are a little heavy bodied in my opinion, but they are much calmer birds.

 

[RacerWife7]

Pyrrhos!

There's a giant hole in the ground because we're finally continuing to work on the pond. It got wayyyyy too hot to be digging out there, so we had to take a break. We're going to have an aquaponics system to grow veggies for the family, that way we can spend the money on buying local, hormone/chemical-free meat(as right now, it's just too expensive, but if we don't need to buy veggies, then that's a huge portion of our spending cut out). We don't mind if the ducks munch on the leaves or the bottom veggies, either, since the food is really only being grown for us.

The hole in the ground was a big hit, though, lol. Everyone was super excited to "help" us dig!

AWWWWWWWWWW!!! Pyrrhos, is such a pretty girl!! My Peepers is getting greener and greener every day. I have to take another pic of him and share. He's a pretty boy - and quite the RANDY character. Much to his dismay, my girl Spot (Swedish Blue) doesn't want anything to do with him and will dive underwater to avoid his advances. She much prefers our big boy, Raspberry (another Swede). In the spring, I'm going to separate the boys. I think I'll keep Spot with Raspberry. Unfortunately, Peepers will have to be the lone bachelor in his own habitat because I won't have them hurting each other - or my girl, Spot - over stinkin' spring hormones.

 

[fallenangel79]

She doesn't need to know they aren't biologically hers lol!

Aww so cute