creasted duck quetions??

jackrooster

Songster
10 Years
Jan 17, 2010
451
8
129
Maine
i have got a blue sweedish male and a female blue sweedish creasted duck. If i breed them with i get a 50/50 chance that the baby will be creasted???
 
Quote:
Yup, half will be crested.

If you breed 2 crested ducks together of all the eggs, 25% die before they hatch (or shortly after hatching if they are unlucky), 50% are crested, and 25% are normal.
 
Yes, you have a 50% chance that any particular duckling will have a crest, and 50% chance of no crest. This is not quite the same thing as having half of the ducklings crested, and half not crested. If you could do the cross enough times to produce 1000 offspring, then something close to 500 of the ducklings would have gotten the "crested" gene, and the remainder wouldn't. In a sample group as small as one year's eggs from one pair, the results could be wildly skewed, like 80/20. If you narrow it down to one clutch of, say, 12 eggs, then it would be quite possible for the hatchlings to all have crests, or none of them; nothing says they have to go "one for you, one for me, one for you, . . . !" To further confuse things, I hear that there are some ducks that haven't got a crest, even though they did inherit the gene for it!
 
Yes It should really work 50/50 but I have a Rouen male and a crested Rouen female and when I bred them together and hatched ducklings, the results were not what I expected. Out of 40 or so ducklings I got 1 crested( crest smaller then mother) and all the other not crested.
 
The gene for Crested (Cr) in ducks is apparently completely lethal in a double dose with ducklings pure (homozygous) for the gene failing to hatch. So if you mate two crested birds (heterozygotes) together you may get approximately 25% dead in shell due to abnormalities, but 2/3 (50% of total eggs set) of those that hatch will be crested, & the other third non-crested (theoretically).

According to Lancaster the gene exhibits variable expressivity with some heterozygotes appearing normal (no crest), some will have large crests, & some will have crest sizes anywhere in between.
 

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