Crested duck thread

[buff goose guy]

I find ducks with a crest beautiful at times but the crest poses a problem to the offspring of the said duck



No I don't breed crested ducks and don't want to but I feel that some people need support if they do breed crested ducks . You people who do you face many challenges and I just want to say that I feel sorry for every loss you have.


I do however have one crested duck who was born to me through 2 non crested Rouen parents . His father and his mother had no crest and the breeder told us nothing of their genetics just that they were pure bred rouens , the first batch my female had 23 babies died in the eggs 10 lived and one with a crest .


Aperently the parents were carriers of the crest and many of the ducklings never saw the light of day but were alive in an egg only to break the shell and die due to poor information given to us by a breeder .


But this gene can be bred out through many generations of selective breeding .


Feel free to share your stories of these wonderful ducks who have lived past a hole in their heads .

 

[subhanalah]

This was due to the parents having slender genetic pool. (The same slender genetic pool.)
Even if they don't have the exact same parents, it appears they come from the same line, and this line has been watered down a lot through line breeding or inbreeding without enough outside blood being introduced. That's how most "new" genes pop up.

If I understand it all correctly, that is.
But there is no such thing as a "carrier" of this gene due to its dominant/codominant nature.

If you were to breed you drake and hen with another breed, you would not get crested ducklings from either, fairly certain...I smell an experiment brewing...are you up for it?

 

[buff goose guy]

I see an experiment too . How exciting .


You could be right actually the breeder was not the best and seemed to only breed crested so I was skeptical ( probably spelled that wrong ) but I took the ducks anyway ( actually I took 12 no crests ) since it was a lady who had just been diagnosed with lung and breast cancer stage both stage 4

 

[buff goose guy]

It is a small crest nothing gigantic but a crest still


Also all my female rouens have passed and all I have are boys ,I have 2 flocks of boys ( even though they're free ranging but still choose to stay separated ) so usually what ends up happening is that a female mallard comes in and stats for a few months only to mate with the rouens multiple times before she goes off and lay her eggs else where .

Anyway a half Cayuga half mallard flew in 4 years ago and has stayed since then with my Rouen flock contains the crested duck (aka poof head) and I am now incubating her eggs after all of her babies have died in the last 3 years this year I started to incubate her eggs


In the last few years ( not the babies I've been hatching ), there have been only one with a poof and it died by turtles . And that's one out of say around 40 eggs hatched .


( mother above )


Now I've been thinking of the other female mallards who have come and gone , how many of those babies have had poofs and maybe survived .

 

[buff goose guy]

Sorry I know this is my third post in a row but I keep forgetting to say like one thing and then my computer locks up so I have a hard time editing )


What kind if ducks do you have in mind for the experiment other than the crested one , breed wise ?

 

[subhanalah]

Something different genetically from the rouens. I guess I would need to know the domestic duck family tree for that.

Maybe Saxony or silver appleyards? Anconas would be really nice! I love my Anconas. But I'm pretty certain that your drake won't produce crested ducklings with the other girls...unless he has a crest that can't be seen.

I'm not indicating to breed the already crested duck.

Your crested duck it's a drake?

 

[buff goose guy]

Yes my crested duck is a drake


All of those are far way from mallards rouens really being the closet to the mallard I think


But the Cayuga comes from the West Indies duck (like the minture Cayuga ) but that comes from a mallard


Yeah but I'm think all of my other boys might be heterozygous for it since all of my males are related .


I actually ahve 3 pastel rouens and 2 normal rouens heterozygous for pastel coloration . The poof head being a normally colored one

 

[subhanalah]

http://www.metzerfarms.com/Articles/CrestedDucksUnusualBrains.pdf
Also this:
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crested_duck_(breed)

The domestic Crested Duck is a duckbreed descended from the Mallard. It has its appearance because it is heterozygousfor a genetic mutation causing a deformity of the skull. As a result, when a pair of crested ducks breed, the young sort out in the usual 1-2-1 ratio:-

25% are homozygous for the normal allele of this gene and so have no crest and if bred together their offspring will never have a crest.

50% are heterozygous for this gene and hatch with a crest of varying sizes.

25% are homozygous for the crestedallele of this gene and die from exposedbrain without hatching, as it is lethal in homozygous form.

If a crested duck and a non-crested duck breed together, the resulting ducklings would be expected to be 50% crested and 50% non-crested.

 

[subhanalah]

Yes my crested duck is a drake


All of those are far way from mallards rouens really being the closet to the mallard I think


But the Cayuga comes from the West Indies duck (like the minture Cayuga ) but that comes from a mallard


Yeah but I'm think all of my other boys might be heterozygous for it since all of my males are related .


I actually ahve 3 pastel rouens and 2 normal rouens heterozygous for pastel coloration . The poof head being a normally colored one

the heterozygous ducks are the ones who are crested, since it is a dominant gene. Please see my post right before this one ^^up there^^

 

[buff goose guy]

Sorry then Idk what I'm talking about I'm so tired .

Either way if I ever breed him ( which I probably won't ) I would do it with most likely a Muscovy which the baby has no way to get a crest but also it would be intertidal and unfair to that bird with no way of passing on it's genes .