Can you get white Swedish ducks?

[elizabethfaith]

Last summer (January) I bought a mix batch of Pekin and Swedish Blue eggs. The seller marked the eggs by breed for us. I had a white duckling hatch out of an egg marked as Swedish. I gave the pekins away to my aunt but kept the Swedes and the white duckling, thinking that maybe it's possible to get white Swedes. Now that she's fully grown however, she really does just look like a pekin to me. She's just hatched her first clutch. Out of 17 babies 8 are fully white with a bit of blue on their bills. The rest look like blue and silver Swedes. Every duck I've seen identified as a Pekin Swedish Blue cross has been all blotchy with white and blue colour. But these little guys just look pekin or swedish, nothing blotchy or mutt about them. So, what breed is by duck?

 

[Miss Lydia]

Last summer (January) I bought a mix batch of Pekin and Swedish Blue eggs. The seller marked the eggs by breed for us. I had a white duckling hatch out of an egg marked as Swedish. I gave the pekins away to my aunt but kept the Swedes and the white duckling, thinking that maybe it's possible to get white Swedes. Now that she's fully grown however, she really does just look like a pekin to me. She's just hatched her first clutch. Out of 17 babies 8 are fully white with a bit of blue on their bills. The rest look like blue and silver Swedes. Every duck I've seen identified as a Pekin Swedish Blue cross has been all blotchy with white and blue colour. But these little guys just look pekin or swedish, nothing blotchy or mutt about them. So, what breed is by duck?

Welcome to BYC @elizabethfaith I googled White Swedish ducks and this came up..

Go google and see what you find.

 

[Tevyes Dad]

Welcome to BYC @elizabethfaith I googled White Swedish ducks and this came up..

Go google and see what you find.

Wow! You can tell from the bill it isn't a typical white duck. Usually they have some orange with freckles if they are a girl. That blue/black bill definitely looks like my Swedish.

 

[Miss Lydia]

Wow! You can tell from the bill it isn't a typical white duck. Usually they have some orange with freckles if they are a girl. That blue/black bill definitely looks like my Swedish.

Isn't she gorgeous, I had never heard of white Swedish before I googled them.

@Tevyes Dad your avatar is adorable.

 

[PotatoWaffles]

Aren't there three phenotypes of Swedish ducks? Black, blue and silver? Cross a black phenotype and a silver phenotype and you get all blue phenotypes, an example of genetic incomplete dominance. Or something like that, lol. Nobody talks much about the silver Swedish phenotype. Could she be a very light silver phenotype?

 

[Miss Lydia]

Aren't there three phenotypes of Swedish ducks? Black, blue and silver? Cross a black phenotype and a silver phenotype and you get all blue phenotypes, an example of genetic incomplete dominance. Or something like that, lol. Nobody talks much about the silver Swedish phenotype. Could she be a very light silver phenotype?

Maybe so I had never seen this color till yesterday kind of like the White Campbell we don't see them on here much either.

 

[PotatoWaffles]

From Metzer's website:

"The most interesting component of the Blue Swedish breed is the production of the blue color. Blue birds do not breed true. In other words, if you mate a Blue Swedish with another Blue Swedish, only 50% will hatch blue. You will also get 25% black with white chests (called Black Swedish) and 25% that are a very light grey color, often called Silver or Splashed White Swedish. To produce the blue color you must have heterozygote parents, meaning they have a black and a silver gene for feather color. In addition, the first two or three primary flight feathers are pure white in a Blue or Black Swedish duck. This, along with the correctly sized white patch on the chest, makes the Blue Swedish a difficult bird to perfect in terms of feather coloration.

So that we can produce 100% blue colored Blue Swedish, we have two breeder flocks. In one flock we have Black Swedish males and Silver females. In the other flock we have Silver males and Black Swedish females. All the progeny from these crosses will be the correct blue color. In June when we need breeders for next year, we switch the males so Black are on Black and Silver on Silver. We collect these eggs for about three weeks and hatch them for breeders. Then we switch the males and go back to producing the correctly colored Blue Swedish for the rest of the season. This is the reason we do not have Blue Swedish or Blue Runners available in July of each year. "

They don't offer the option to purchase the silver Swedish, just the blacks and blues, and hardly anyone talks about them. I bet they look really pretty.

 

[Miss Lydia]

From Metzer's website:

"The most interesting component of the Blue Swedish breed is the production of the blue color. Blue birds do not breed true. In other words, if you mate a Blue Swedish with another Blue Swedish, only 50% will hatch blue. You will also get 25% black with white chests (called Black Swedish) and 25% that are a very light grey color, often called Silver or Splashed White Swedish. To produce the blue color you must have heterozygote parents, meaning they have a black and a silver gene for feather color. In addition, the first two or three primary flight feathers are pure white in a Blue or Black Swedish duck. This, along with the correctly sized white patch on the chest, makes the Blue Swedish a difficult bird to perfect in terms of feather coloration.

So that we can produce 100% blue colored Blue Swedish, we have two breeder flocks. In one flock we have Black Swedish males and Silver females. In the other flock we have Silver males and Black Swedish females. All the progeny from these crosses will be the correct blue color. In June when we need breeders for next year, we switch the males so Black are on Black and Silver on Silver. We collect these eggs for about three weeks and hatch them for breeders. Then we switch the males and go back to producing the correctly colored Blue Swedish for the rest of the season. This is the reason we do not have Blue Swedish or Blue Runners available in July of each year. "

They don't offer the option to purchase the silver Swedish, just the blacks and blues, and hardly anyone talks about them. I bet they look really pretty.

I'd love to see their breeding flocks. Thanks for the info. I like that word heterozygote I'm a parent and not sure I'd want to be called that though . lol

 

[PotatoWaffles]

Lol it is a fun word. I LOVE genetics, I find it fascinating A heterozygote is a diploid organism that has different set of alleles at a locus on their chromosome that determines some kind of trait. If they had a matching set, they would be considered homozygous, not heterozygous, for that trait. You more than likely ARE a heterozygote for some traits, like attached or unattached earlobes, cheek dimples, cleft chin, freckles. But you are probably a homozygote for others too, lol. Genetics is awesome!

 

[PotatoWaffles]

And to stay on topic, here is a picture I found on the Internet of Swedish ducks exhibiting all three phenotypes.