Breeding Plans!

[Canadian Wind]

Sorry, this might be long!

Any experienced Muscovy breeders want to chime in and give me advice on my breeding plans for next year, please? This is my current flock:

Drakes: - Cloud, Blue, Pied
- Mist, Blue, light Pied
- Jewel, Black, Barred
- Latté, Chocolate, White Head, possibly split to Barred

Ducks: - Cappuccino, Chocolate, Magpie / Whitehead
- Athena, Black, Pied
- Sweetie, White (black), Pied? (had a black cap until this spring's moult)
- Ritz Quacker, Black, Possibly split to Barred
- Dainty, Black, Pied
- Mocha, Chocolate, Pied, possibly split to Barred
- Java, Chocolate, possibly split to Barred

Yes, I realize I have too many drakes. I'm actually culling two, but cannot bring myself to cull any of the others. The Blues are just too pretty, and I want the Barred and the Chocolate. And technically, I gave the Barred to my grandson, and one of the Blues to my daughter. Technically, lol! I plan on building separate breeding runs for them, then allowing the drakes to flock together as the girls sit their eggs.

Out of all of them, Cloud, Mist, and Dainty are siblings, and so are Ritz and Jewel. I don't know about the others. I just got Mocha, Java, and Latté a week ago, and picked birds that were of different ages so they may not be related. I listed them as possibly split to Barred since the breeder was concentrating on this trait.

The plan, tentatively, is as follows: (edited after Quatie's post)

Cloud to Athena and Cappuccino, giving a mix of Blue and Black Pied, males from Cappy split to Chocolate
Mist to Sweetie and Mocha, for Black and Blue Pieds, males from Mocha split to Chocolate
Jewel to Java, Blacks, Possibly Barred or split to it, males split to Chocolate
Latté to Dainty (Chocolate females, black males split to Chocolate, Pied, White Head and possibly split to Barred), and Ritz (Chocolate females, black males split to Chocolate, White Heads, possible Barred or split to Barred)

I eventually want to add more colours, as well as breed for Silver and Lilac. This seems, to me, to be the logical first step but I would appreciate any advice!

 

[sourland]

I wish you success in your breeding plans.

 

[Quatie]

Here is a genetics calculator that can help you decide how you want to go about things. I think you will need to decide what you are hoping to breed. If you want a lot of variety of colors, I would breed your blue drakes to the chocolate females. The offspring will be blue drakes that split to chocolate. Those drakes will allow you to get black, blue, silver, chocolate, lilac, and buff colored ducks depending on who they are breed to.

If you are also looking to do barred, you may want to start breeding the barred drake to the females you think may split to barred and figure which ones do. That will help you to get more barred females to breed.

 

[Canadian Wind]

Thank you, @Quatie ! I want to do it all, lol! I've adjusted the breeding to have one more Chocolate hen breeding with a Blue drake. Problem is, two of the Chocolates are possibly split to Barred, so I want to have at least one breed with the Barred drake. The other possible split is his sister, and I don't want to go down that path at this point.

 

[Quatie]

Thank you, @Quatie ! I want to do it all, lol! I've adjusted the breeding to have one more Chocolate hen breeding with a Blue drake. Problem is, two of the Chocolates are possibly split to Barred, so I want to have at least one breed with the Barred drake. The other possible split is his sister, and I don't want to go down that path at this point.

Yeah it can definitely tempting to do it all. I would start small and get the hang of breeding those ducks first before adding in more colors. You may also be able to move your females from one drake in the beginning of the breeding season and switch to the other one in the second half. They will just need time in between before hatching eggs with the second drake.

 

[Canadian Wind]

Yeah it can definitely tempting to do it all. I would start small and get the hang of breeding those ducks first before adding in more colors. You may also be able to move your females from one drake in the beginning of the breeding season and switch to the other one in the second half. They will just need time in between before hatching eggs with the second drake.

Thankfully, this is not my first foray into breeding for colour/patterns. I've bred lovebirds and fancy rats in the past on a fairly large scale for a home operation (I learned to sleep with an arm over my ear due to having 30+ lovebirds start 'chirping' at the break of dawn!).

That's also given me a very good understanding of genetics.

I'm hoping I'll be able to get two clutches out of the females. Summers here can be so short sometimes! And if Spring comes late (like it did this year) that cuts down on breeding time, too.

 

[Quatie]

Thankfully, this is not my first foray into breeding for colour/patterns. I've bred lovebirds and fancy rats in the past on a fairly large scale for a home operation (I learned to sleep with an arm over my ear due to having 30+ lovebirds start 'chirping' at the break of dawn!).

That's also given me a very good understanding of genetics.

I'm hoping I'll be able to get two clutches out of the females. Summers here can be so short sometimes! And if Spring comes late (like it did this year) that cuts down on breeding time, too.

That is really cool. Lovebirds are beautiful birds.

Yeah it definitely will be hard with your shorter seasons. Hopefully you will get two clutches. I would love to see them when you start breeding.

 

[Canadian Wind]

That is really cool. Lovebirds are beautiful birds.

Yeah it definitely will be hard with your shorter seasons. Hopefully you will get two clutches. I would love to see them when you start breeding.

They are beautiful, but so loud!!! And a lot more time consuming than the ducks, since I hand fed them.

Rest assured that, bar anything going drastically wrong (like all the satellites falling out of the sky!), I'll be updating when the time comes. It's going to be sooooo hard to wait until Spring!

 

[Canadian Wind]

Well, this is annoying... My Chocolate drake is trilling. >.<
And... I think my Barred might be female too. No size difference at all between the Barred and it's sibling, and they are at least six weeks old. The others were all showing marked differences by that time, with the drakes now as big or bigger than my adult hens. There's only about a week's difference between them.

Back to the drawing board!

 

[Miss Lydia]

But having females is wonderful!! lol