- Nov 3, 2010
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I have a Self-Black drake (purchased a few years ago from duckluck - I'm pretty sure my drake's daddy is her "Blackjack", his picture is the second post way back at the beginning of this thread) who is carrying a single (heterozygous) copy of a chocolate dilution over a Self-Chocolate hen and 3 Bibbed Lilac hens. So, while every single bird in the pen DOES have the Chocolate dilution, not all the ducklings pick it up. They throw Blacks, Blues, Chocolates, and Lilacs - usually Bibbed, but I have hatched one Self-Chocolate this year from that pen.
The Chocolate Magpies are in a separate pen along with my regular Black and White Magpies and Blue Magpies. I hatched TONS of Chocolates (Bibbed, Magpie, and Ancona patterned) from that pen last year, but I added an excellent Blue Bibbed drake this spring to improve the type on my Magpies, so I've been hatching mostly Blue Magpie and Blue Pied from that pen this year.
I usually sell eggs as an assortment from all 3 of my breeding pens (pen #3 is set up to produce Self-Blues) though, because I'm only getting 1-3 eggs a day from each pen at the moment. This past week has been especially bad as far as the number of eggs I've gotten from the Calls. Too much hot, humid, stormy weather. It's supposed to cool down this coming week, but then there's the holiday weekend, so no shipping!
Gorgeous! I would love to have some eggs from the first group you described, heck I would take a mixture from all the groups. I understand about the weather, I have one hen that randomly because sick when it got hot and she has been my house duck for the past few days and then I have everyone else either brooding ducklings or molting! I have one grey laying about every other day right now. If the weather decides to drop back down some and they pick up let me know. I am dying for some chocolates.
