AvianBrain
Chirping
- May 27, 2020
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I have a three year old mallard hen that proved multiple times she can sit and brood for a while, multiple times. This was before I purchased my new blue fawn call drake, I was considering letting my hen go broody on live eggs, thus breeding the two. Not completely sure I want to do this yet, but it would be cool to perhaps start founding stock for pet quality Blue Fawn Mallard bantams, as blue fawn is a co dominant gene, it does not require inbreeding or back crossing to calls to secure the trait. My main questions are,
- how many generations of back crossing to mallard bantams would I possibly need to produce some nice blue pet quality mallard bantams?
- the hen I want to use for this first generation is socialy dominant to the drake, as of now, and does not want to breed with the drake, although the new duck's quarrentine just ended last week and are still new to one another, will my hen likely let the drake breed her anytime soon?
- is body shape and bill length in this case actual seperate alleles, or will the offspring pretty much have intermidiate body shape and bill length of the parents?
-does an all drake flock need to be out of sound range of hens for the most part or will just a good seperation space and a non see through barrier good enough?
-how old is too old for many duck hens to safely breed?
And those against any and all crossbreeding, I do understand preserving genetic distinction, but mallard bantams I don't think are in risk of dying out geneticaly.
(Real, Wild-Type Mallards on the other hand are to a degree...)
- how many generations of back crossing to mallard bantams would I possibly need to produce some nice blue pet quality mallard bantams?
- the hen I want to use for this first generation is socialy dominant to the drake, as of now, and does not want to breed with the drake, although the new duck's quarrentine just ended last week and are still new to one another, will my hen likely let the drake breed her anytime soon?
- is body shape and bill length in this case actual seperate alleles, or will the offspring pretty much have intermidiate body shape and bill length of the parents?
-does an all drake flock need to be out of sound range of hens for the most part or will just a good seperation space and a non see through barrier good enough?
-how old is too old for many duck hens to safely breed?
And those against any and all crossbreeding, I do understand preserving genetic distinction, but mallard bantams I don't think are in risk of dying out geneticaly.
(Real, Wild-Type Mallards on the other hand are to a degree...)