Breeding Projects -- Waterfowl

[Miss Lydia]

Quote:
Well, if you do good, it's well worht it. {ahem $$}

Tell me about it! I get $200.00-$250.00 for each of my Crow ducklings, aka WV Mountain Ducks

I would love to see a Crow Duck,

 

[The Duck ABC's]

Quote:
I'm glad I was able to reserve 20 of your ducklings for spring. Can't wait to breed those rare birds. Oh, btw the price is a bargain considering how rare they are.

 

[xIndigoSkyx]

She has a lot of face stripes

 

[GrannyCarol]

Well, I don't have a line of blue/cream Appleyards, I lost that drake and he was GORGEOUS before I could get an Appleyard to breed him to! I have one now and will have to start over to try to reproduce him. *sigh* If I'm going to breed ducks anyways, and I figure I will because I enjoy ducklings so much, then I might as well have a goal!

BTW, I have had a couple of female Saxonys, which should have been pure, turn out the color of your Bessemers. They weren't huge and their mother had been separated out for 3 weeks with a Saxony drake. Could have been retrained sperm from???? Who knows? They were good sized and properly shaped. So, could be the color genes in the Bessemer are carried in Saxonys somewhere. Just a random thought. I culled them, because I was breeding for good quality purebred Saxonys.

 

[xIndigoSkyx]

I keep all my babies. I don't like hurting them in any way. I would so wanna take any ducklings/chickens that no one wants. Itd be great. I'm always taking in things no one wants.

 

[Ducks and Banny hens]

Quote:
You mght contact Josh Snyder at Snyder Waterfowl. He bred the original Blue Creams. Since importing/exporting is very hard (and he's up here in canada), he might help you 're-develope' the variety. I don't know, but you could if you wanted to.

 

[Ducks and Banny hens]

Quote:
You'd have 700 ducks after 3 weeks.

That's 100 showers a day!

 

[GrannyCarol]

Quote:
You mght contact Josh Snyder at Snyder Waterfowl. He bred the original Blue Creams. Since importing/exporting is very hard (and he's up here in canada), he might help you 're-develope' the variety. I don't know, but you could if you wanted to.

I didn't even know they existed!

Ok, I looked up his website... his blue/cream drake is exactly the color of Larry, love it! His blue cream Appleyard duck on the bottom is the spitting image of my Appleyard/Saxony duck. I'm thinking that I can work with what I have here and probably more Appleyards (I've several Saxonys from two different bloodlines to work with) and get what I'm looking for. I'll have to send him a message. His peach Appleyards are an awful lot like what I'd expect in color from an Appleyard/Saxony cross - I suspect that would be an easy way to go to get the colors, esp. since I already have them. Oh fun.

 

[Ducks and Banny hens]

Sometimes I wonder why he didn't use Saxonies, as they already carry the aleutian gene found in all appleyard colors (right now, there are four: Silver phase, Blue Cream phase, Peach phase, and Chestnut phase) but it says on his website that he used a Blue fawn Rouen.

 

[GrannyCarol]

Yes, I read that. Now I'm going to have to go sort out the color genes with my handy dandy "Storey's Guide to Raising Ducks" and see what I have to work with.

I do find my Saxonys don't have the wide body build the Appleyards do. He might have found a better body type in the Rouens, or he might just have had them more locally available to use, like I already have Saxonys. I have a dreadful time here with Appleyards. All my other ducks do well, have normal vigor, etc, with the rare loss here and there, but my Appleyards seem to die due to possible toxicity reactions - water belly, enlarged internal organs, odd problems. I'm hoping that by outcrossing for the color and looking for other bloodlines of Appleyards, I can keep these delightful ducks, with their silly personalities and many great qualities as well as some really awesome colors!