Well any ayam mix could pass on fibromelanism, especially if bred to another fibro bird. It just takes selection every generation. If you're looking to start a flock I'd recommend using at least a couple more unrelated birds. I'd love to see what you hatch, keep us posted.
Thank you guys, I found someone right on the way to my work who'll take them. He's got a nice farm and raised wild ducks and geese before. He said they usually fly away in the fall.
A duck nesting at my work died and we found her 6 babies wandering around so I took them in. They hatched about a week ago. They're wild mallards but I've had them since they were a day old so they won't be able to be released. I've been hand feeding them and giving them lots of attention so...
They will find their own shelter, but you should try to lock them up just to be safe. Some of mine would sneak off into the woods to hide and stay there for hours afterwards. I'd spend hours looking for those damn birds thinking they got blown away or crushed by a branch, and then they'd pop up...
I've bought and hatched a lot of pekins, sometimes they just having slightly varying beak colors. I've seen a few ducklings with this coloring before, it's probably genetic. Hens prefer drakes with lighter beak colors (there've been studies on this) so drakes tend to have lighter beaks due to...
She's slender and no sex feather, so presumably female. They mate all the time just to show dominance, I don't think you should be worried. Cute ducks!
Yeah, if you wanna avoid something like that you might want to contact others with hookbill flocks. Maybe contact whoever you got your hookbills from and see if they'd want to buy or trade him. I'm sure they'd welcome the genetic diversity. And I'm sure they'd be the ones who can answer your...
I unfortunately don't have my chickens anymore and put a hold on my projects as I'm trying to expatriate, but before I had a flock that were a mix of Dominique, Ameraucana, Polish, and Marans. I liked the variety in egg and feather color they had so I didn't select towards certain ones, but I...
Definitely following, awesome idea and awesome breeding strategy. If your svart is already moody he would do well with more hens and no other roos. A lot of people consider it a bad thing, but I've found that in a free-range flock, the moodier more violent roos do a better job at protecting the...
Someone started a thread here a few years ago with the same idea, the consensus was that crowing is a sign of testosterone and fertility in roosters, and roos who crow less also tend to be less sexually active and have more muted secondary sex features. Theoretically it could be possible if you...
I'd think it's much simpler than that since it's just a matter of size and a mendelian trait, you could just breed a showgirl to an LF silkie, and keep breeding back to LF silkie using only the bowtie offspring until you get the desired size, then breed some of the bowtie showgirls together for...
It's completely possible that they are, we just don't know because no one's been keeping track. I actually read an article about this the other day, how it could be much more common than we think simply because the only way to know is through genetic testing or isolating females for long periods...