Call color/gender?

[Mrs. Turbo]

Quote:
Hey, Mrs. Turbo, maybe you can answer a question for me - I read somewhere that you get the Magpie pattern by breeding a Pied bird to a Bibbed bird - is that correct?

I don't know much about the pied..... the magpie pattern is hard to get anyways with breeding magpie to magpie. I think we hatched about 15 magpie ducklings so far this year and only 2 have the correct pattern and a few more are pretty close. We did have a couple totally white magpies and one that looks just like a black bibbed..... you just never know what you are gonna get.....LOL. They can be culled out at hatch just on pattern alone.

 

[Mrs. Turbo]

Quote:
we wait for the voice change to sex them or the drake curl....before that it is just a guess. If you pick them up you can pinch the web a little to get them to quack. Ok, flame away about the pinch.....just a little love pinch, not hard.

 

[Sweetfolly]

Okay, I'm not trying to hijack the thread, but what pattern would you call these three Call ducklings (in with their Runner friend - the brooder was disgusting, please overlook that

):

That's from a week or so ago, and their feathers are really coming in now - they're Blue Fawn as a base color (I think), with the white pattern. I'll try to get more recent pictures - I started a thread asking what color they were about a month ago when I first got them, and no one had any idea, so I'll update it with new pictures today or tomorrow.

Edited to add pictures of one of the ducklings today - I don't usually manhandle my ducklings like that - she was being very uncooperative!

 

[justmeandtheflock]

Here is a pic of my bunch when they were tiny. They are under a red light in the brooder so the color is funny. The blue magpie are on the left and the snowys on the right. Yours look similar to the my blue magpie but darker in color

 

[Sweetfolly]

Hmmm...that's what I was thinking - that mine are Blue Fawn Magpie (because there seems to be too much white for regular Blue Fawn Pied). I wasn't sure though because I've never heard of a Blue Fawn Magpie...I supposed the Magpie pattern can be bred on to any base color though.

There were two other ducklings in the same clutch mine came from that someone else here on BYC bought - one looked like the lighter of your two Magpies, justmeandtheflock - a mostly white head with just some spotty color here and there. The other one was very dark, more plain Bibbed. I took all the ones that were on between, with little bibs and dark masks over their faces.

 

[Mrs. Turbo]

sometimes it is hard to tell because some ducklings look the same in many ways or they could be mixed..... they don't have eyestripes, could be bibbed mix or magpie mix??????

 

[Sweetfolly]

Mrs. Turbo :

sometimes it is hard to tell because some ducklings look the same in many ways or they could be mixed..... they don't have eyestripes, could be bibbed mix or magpie mix??????

Could be - they came from a Butterscotch x White mating - Butterscotch drake over two White ducks. They could be anything. I know they have the Blue dilution from their Butterscotch daddy, now I'm just trying to fill in the rest. They're all really cute though, and the parents were really nice, small Calls - daddy had a very short bill, but not so much on the mommies

.

I just want a few more pet Whites for myself, so I'm planning on breeding any girls in this bunch (I'm 99% sure they're 2 girls and a boy) to an adult White drake I have next year to get myself more whites (I should end up with about half of the ducklings being white - the rest will be a surprise). I might try breeding these guys together just once though - it would be neat to see, if they are Blue Fawn Pied (I know, they don't have eye-stripes - maybe they're just Blue, but they have brown penciling on the feathers. If they're carrying other heterozygous genes, can those "leak" through Blue?

), if I get some Apricot Pied and Mallard Pied ducklings from them.

 

[justmeandtheflock]

I think I heard the beginnings of a quack coming from the larger, darker snowy. Is that possible? Is there a chance it is a girl with the darker coloring? Nothing but peeps from the blue magpies so far.