Breeding for egg color

[PineBurrowPeeps]

I have one Khaki Campbell duck hen who throws a gorgeous green egg. I'm wondering how I would go about breeding future generations using her for egg color?
I have 2 beautiful green eggs of hers on day 21 in my bator now. If I got a drake out of one of those eggs would I breed it back to her later?

 

[PineBurrowPeeps]

Wow, no one has any advice huh?

I mean, how do they breed for Maran egg color? How do they select who gets bred to what?
I realize we're talking about ducks here, but the principle cannot be that far off, no?

 

[byrandom]

Quote:
Just like any other quality you want to breed for. In this instance, considering your drake would not be "exhibiting" the egg color (considering they do not lay eggs), you would have to either hatch the drake out yourself, or be able to gather the necessary information from whomever you get the drake from.

You would then keep back the hens, at least until the point of laying. Then compare eggs to the hen. Lighter - try to find a darker-egged drake.

In any event, I wish you luck! It may take several generations before you could see a noticable difference.

 

[flyingmonkeypoop]

You could do that. I have always had layer ducks lay colored eggs so I never thought about breeding for egg color. If you dont care for breeding pure birds you could use a cayuga drake and see what color eggs those ducklings throw.

 

[PineBurrowPeeps]

What color eggs do Cayuga usually lay?

I *may* actually phase out chickens and only keep ducks for layers in the future as my KC ducks are outlaying my chickens and are MUCH more hardy. That's a long way in the future but my goal is to have a duck that lays extremely well and lays a gorgeous egg at that.

 

[flyingmonkeypoop]

The cayugas I have had have always laid colored eggs ranging from gray to purple to blue and one was greenish. I hear ya on the ducks laying better. When I had my campbell she laid through the winters and all the time, she was such a great layer even when she was about 5.