Confused with Welsh Harlequins

[Blooming chicks]

Wow--so glad I read this, I had it backwards too. I thought the girls had dark beaks at birth and kept them. Good thing I'm straight now.

 

[Caprice_Acres]

I guess I'll just have to wait and see. Their bills/feet haven't changed in color yet at all... they've stayed the same from hatch. I figured they would have by now, or at least shown some sort of change! I've also read that some lines don't switch or aren't auto sexing... who knows! I wouldn't mind two males and a female, then I can just keep the better of the two males and have a pair.

 

[CityChicker]

If yours' bills haven't changed since hatch then you don't have the sex-linked bills in your birds. Some WH don't. All of them from Holderread's that I have seen *do* have the sex-linked bills, almost none of the ones I have seen from Metzer's do (although a few here and there have). I am not sure where yours came from. Anyway, I think some people also confuse sex differences in bill color of the adult birds with an honest to goodness sex-linked trait.

Your two lighter birds also look different because they are obvious Golds. Look at the color of their darker feathers that are coming in. The feathers are clearly more brown than black. Your bird in front is harder to tell. By bill color, I would say female (but, it seems apparent that yours might not have the sex-linked bills). By body color, I would totally say male. All of my males looked just like that at that age. Hard to say though. I also can't tell in the picture if he is a Gold or Silver. He looks more Silver because of the black feathering, but clearly has some brown as well. My Gold male had some amount of darker coloration as well, so who knows. All of my Gold females were lightly colored in juvenile plumage like yours are. It will be interesting to see how they mature, but I guess I am leaning towards you having 2 Gold females and 1 Silver male. LOL.

I don't know though. I went back to look at the pics again and the pics look like the brightness is off (at least on my screen) so it is really hard to tell the coloration. Maybe it is just my computer. They should be quacking though. Of all the ducks I have ever kept, my WH had the clearest (and loudest) voices. LOL.

 

[Caprice_Acres]

They are quacking, but these are my first 'real' ducks so I'm not really fluent in quacks yet, LOL... all my other ducks are 'scovies.

So, I couldn't tell ya if they sound different or not.

As for color, YES, the picture color is messed up because they're cell phone camera pictures. Pretty good for a cell phone camera, but still not good at capturing color. I'm *pretty* sure the breeder said all the babies would be silvers, but when bred these guys should produce golds. I'll just have to wait until their wing color comes in... as I understand it, silvers keep the blue wing markings (similar to mallards) but the golds have a brownish wing marking.