Welsh Harlequin

[Zombified]

Yes, for sexing day-olds.

I was thinking, though, of adult drakes, whose bills and feet are yellow, compared with hens, who are black/black. Please do correct me if I'm wrong.

Mine are at 6 weeks at this point, and it's still not certain if I have 2 or 3 drakes out of my batch of 10. I'll be processing a few here in a couple weeks, and am only keeping one drake.

Oh, that's correct, haha. Sorry for the misunderstanding.

 

[chickkrzi]

my duckling at 6 day olds

duckling at 6 weeks , drake on left , and duck on right

 

[Kimarie411]

my duckling at 6 day olds



duckling at 6 weeks , drake on left , and duck on right

Oh my gosh they are so pretty! I'm very impatiently waiting on mine to be shipped

 

[GentFarmer]

my duckling at 6 day olds



duckling at 6 weeks , drake on left , and duck on right

Are you certain?

This picture does nothing but make me question exactly what I have.

I got 10 from Metzer, with 5 sexed as female. Care to take a guess which one of your ducks most closely resembles my ladies? lol At what age do we expect to see the green plumage on the drakes? I think until that point, there's no point worrying it. I've been going more by bill/foot color than plumage up to this point, since both are similar.

 

[Muse7]

Nice Pic of the difference on the little girls and boys.
Liz

 

[chickkrzi]

Well the pic of the 6 day olds are the same as 6 weeks old. My drake was always smaller than the duck. so it's very easy to tell them apart. I've also had ducks after 4 days start to have darker bill color then by end of week unable to tell be them apart.

 

[DaisyMeadow]

Hatched out 3 WHs (1 boy, 2 girls) there is a definite size difference and bill color difference between them. (They are the yellow ones.)

 

[DuckBoy323]

Zombified, Are they good mothers? Will they go broody often? I'm new to Welsh Harlequins and should be having some coming in a few weeks. Pretty duck by the way.

 

[Zombified]

Give me a few weeks lol. Mine just started sitting. So far, Eris, my gold phase, is better mom than my silver phase, Nyx. From what I've read, Welsh Harlequins are supposed to be broody, and make good moms. But I know a WH owner whose WH hens have never gone broody. For me, two out of three of my WH hens are broody right now. But mine are less than a year old.

 

[Muse7]

I am celebrating today. I am also strongly considering changing the name of my Gold phase hen from Princes to Miracle.
Yesterday I got home at about pm to find her having gone from chasing the other girls away from the food and showing
off in the morning, to lying limply in a corner of the Duck paddock in under 9 hours. Not many things that can do that
but Botulism. And most of the times that is a death sentence.
'But I mixed up the water and Epson salts and started syringing it down.
Three doses and then one large does of water and Probiotic.

But at 10 pm she was completely down, wings out, flattened and head down.
I was sure I was going to loose her. But I got up at 3 am, quite honestly expecting to find she had passed.
Instead she was on her feet and hissing at me. I had never been so please to have her be annoyed with me.

It's a good day. She is progressing well, drinking more than eating, but eating both her pellets, greens and meal worms.
It is truly a good day.

Liz