color sexed ducklings?

[sydney13]

just wondering if any duck breeds can be colored sexed as ducklings?

 

[Sweetfolly]

Sure, if you breed them right.

There are some strains of Welsh Harlequins that you can sex (with 90% accuracy) at hatching by their bill color.

Or, if you're talking actual down color, you can cross a drake with a sex-linked gene (in ducks, that would be the Brown or the Buff gene) to a duck without the sex-linked gene - for example, a Khaki Campbell drake (Dusky + Brown dilution) to a Dark Campbell duck (Dusky). All of the female ducklings would be Khaki like their dad, and the male ducklings would be Dark like their mom. Generally, in a sex-linked cross, all of the female ducklings will be lighter-colored than the males, because they're expressing their dad's color dilution gene. Besides Campbells, it would be relatively easy to do a sex-linked cross in Runners (like Chocolate drake to Black duck - you'd get Chocolate female ducklings and Black male ducklings) and Calls, just because of the number of different colors readily available to work with in both those breeds.

That's my very simplified breakdown of it. Someone might be able to explain it all better, talking about Z chromosomes and all that jazz.

 

[MrChicken207]

Makes sense to me.

 

[sydney13]

i never knew you could sex breeds with the bill

. other then hybrids are their any true breeds that can be color sexed

 

[treldib]

Mallards lol but not as day-olds...later on you can sex by bill color (with 90% accuracy).