Bessemer Thread Revisited - No Flaming :)

[Ducks and Banny hens]

70%cocoa :

Yes, that is right. Buffs are homozygous for several recessive colour genes that we know about (dusky, chocolate and buff). You can tell that by looking. No testing required for those genes. Are you sure they only have one Blue dilution gene though? That'd be something to test for.

You already know they don't have any black. No sign of bibs. That's all good.

It'd also be good to rule out recessive white. I'm not sure how one dose of Harlequin would show up (if it did at all) so ruling that out would be good too. Also crests.

Then there are other things like leg/feet, bill and eye colour to establish. And then there's type.

It'll take a while to see that the desired characteristics are stable abd to establish them as stable if they are not.

It's worth a go, I think. After all, if people had not done the same thing 150 years ago we'd have half the duck breeds we have now. Getting new or newly discovered ones recognised is not easy but it's not impossible either, if you have something worth developing.

The Blue dilution, I think it's one dose because they are a shade or two darker than our (north american) regular Buffs, but I suppose that doesn't mean anything.

Recessive white, Harlequin and Aleutian are genes that are recessive (of course), and so it would have been very hard in the history of these ducks to have those genes introduced and then survive in a perfect Buff penetrance specimen. There's actually alot of criteria for those genes to go through there. But it is possible.

Bill color (along with bib) is probably the most possible of all the genes that you mentioned. Dusky's carry one of the two bill modifiers (y/y. Willow. The other is Sexlinked Blue). It is possible, via sexlink, that they carry this gene. I must profess that I don't know anything about leg color genes.

I will probably get bibbed specimens, but this isn't because of a penetrance. It's spontaneous. I don't know about in the UK or Australia, but it's very common for two perfectly solid buffs or khakis to produce fully bibbed progeny. This is very strange, but a very common spotaneous mutation. It's not b/b, but I'm not sure whether it's S/S either.​

 

[GrannyCarol]

What I keep thinking about your Bessies is that you need to get some babies as soon as you can, whether they breed entirely true or not, because with only three of them you could easily lose them before you get the breed well established. Whether or not there are others around, at this time, you don't know any and what you have is three matching ducks of a pretty color and good size, who are mostly likely closely related. I'm all for new breeds, it would be fun to work on such a project. Find them a niche and go on with them and, by all means, give them a good working name! But first you really need to get some babies on the ground so that you have some stock to work with and enough to ensure their survival. Then you can worry about having a breed and whether they are accepted. I would think its enough if you say that you have stock that you want to start a breed with and you want to breed for XXXXX traits, type and color and call them "Bessemers". You'll get to write your own breed history starting with "my friend was given these three ducks from another friend and gave them to me, I liked them so well I created this breed out of them" and perhaps, if you are lucky, "I found others by searching through Craigs list and feed stores and putting up ads." and maybe your friend can put you in contact with the person they came from and he (or she) will know more about their origin and you can trace it further back to the person they came from. Good luck!

I'm very curious about their weight, too. My big old Appleyard girl, Lily, was 9 - 10 lbs as an older duck and she was LARGE, she would have passed for a short necked goose...

You can get a good idea as to their weight, if you have a good scale. Someone stands on the scale, gets a weight, then gets back on holding the duck. We have a high quality digital scale and can get within a couple of tenths of a pound variability from weigh in to weigh in.

 

[Ducks and Banny hens]

Yes, I will be breeding them as soon as the snow's gone. I'm putting the two drakes on the hen, so as to increase whatever little genetic diversity I can. I'll start spiral breeding them after that.
I'll be trying to start a trace of the breed's history this spring, along with the Bow Lake fowl. The Bessies will prove difficult to trace, I'm certain. When I got them, they were called Buff Orpington. What kind of Buff Orpington weighs 12 lbs. and looks like a Rouen!?! I rather think, somewhere in the history of them, that someone either conned someone else, or someone had no idea what they were talking about. And both of those things make tracing rather difficult...
I can say almost certainly, that they were once Orpingtons.... That's the other problem, finding the point where they changed for Orpingtons, to "Orpingtons". If they are called the same thing, but are completely different, then I'll have to REALLY dig, trying to find when they were crossed, who did it, etc. But, I'll try tracing.
Anyway, whether they can be traced or not, they can be a breed just the same.

I really want to weigh them soon. Every weight I've given on this thread is just a good guess. I got another suggestion (although it's alot trickier) to put one in a garbage bag and hang it with an angler's scale! I'd prefer the way you said it. Or the box way. Much safer.