Did I hatch a Lavender or Lilac Swedish duck? Some other color?

[cheezenkwackers]

Just for some comparison. These are what I assume were silvers I hatched years ago. They are the only pics I took of them. I can't say it enough how much I wish I could've kept them or wish I had incubated more eggs to try and get more of these, but I gave them to a friend of my dad. Funny thing is the 2 I have here have mostly yellow bills and feet though I think you can see just a little blue coloring in them cause the yellow seems a bit tinted. One of them does have a crest which is an extra reason why I wish I kept or made more of them. I know there's people that say you shouldn't want cresteds in your flock but I like it anyway. The afros are funny.

Anyway, the one without a crest apparently did have a little blue coloring on it's head, hard to tell if it had any on the rest of it. The one with the crest I can't remember if it even had any color. If it did it wasn't much. So once again, I'm wondering if all the ducklings I'm wondering about if they're all silvers or if maybe there's a difference due to the gender... or maybe this new one I have isn't silver.

Now maybe you guys can see why I'm a bit confused about what color my new duckling is... If it is silver it doesn't look like the other ones that I've hatched.

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Silvers have dark bills so I do not think these are them. I have read about white ducks hatching with white down. I suspect that is what these are. I do understand your confusion.

 

[icyangel222]

Silvers have dark bills so I do not think these are them. I have read about white ducks hatching with white down. I suspect that is what these are. I do understand your confusion.

In my flock back then I had blue and black swedes, I did have 2 female pekins but I've hatched a blue swede pekin cross before and they come out marbled with the blue coloring. I'm pretty sure that all the pekin crosses would have at least half the color of the swede drake whether that's blue or black, and don't think any of them would come out all white?

As I'm typing this I had to dig into pekin/swede crosses. It seems normally they come out marbled, but to my surprise I saw some pictures of ones that almost look entirely like pure swedes. If I didn't know better I'd think they ARE pure swedes. So it seems that maybe I had some pekin mixing going on that I was unaware of and assumed most of my flock, including the eggs that I hatched from it were mostly pure swedes. If one or more of them had pekin mix in them maybe that explains why I ended up getting those mostly white ones...? I hatched a few generations of ducks. The ones pictured would've been the 3rd or 4th generation.

I'm trying to remember how it went. When I started off my flock, I had a blue swede drake (we also had a black magpie drake but he was a turd so we didn't keep him). The second year, I bought a couple more swedes to prevent interbreeding but I also incubated a few eggs from the flock, one of the new swedes I bought was a black drake, the black drake wouldn't have possibly had any offspring until the next year. The ones I hatched from the flock that year I believe were all females, offspring of the blue drake, 1 had a crest, and I'm not sure where the crest came from cause all my other ducks didn't have one. Year 3 I only bothered to hatch a few more and 1 was a blue crested drake, he was the favorite besides my first blue drake, such a big afro. And the 4th year I hatched those mostly white ones, one of them having a crest.

So now like I said above maybe what happened was I somehow got 1 or more pekin crosses and didn't know it... and if the parents were both blue swede crosses maybe they produced 2 swede pekin crosses that came out silver. That might explain why there was such little if any blue coloring and they were mostly white with the yellow bills and feet... Holy smokes!!! ...I can't believe I didn't realize this the whole time. But I thought all the pekin crosses came out marbled so it was easy to tell.

I think we have our answer, at least for the white ducklings I hatched before. My new mystery duckling might just be silver after all...... but I'm still going to take more pictures, it's still funny that it's bill has a lot of pink (the blue on it has gotten a bit darker but it's still very pale compared to the blue siblings). There seems to just not be enough pictures of the silver ones, but especially the other colors too like lilac and lavender. If anyone out there ever gets, or suspects they have those colors in their ducklings, please take pictures so people can learn what it looks like.

And sorry for the long reply but I found it kinda amusing that I likely just figured out what those white ones actually were after all this time. Like I said in the first post of this thread it's been almost a decade since I hatched any eggs (I bought some new ducklings in 23' cause most of my old ones had died and I had no drakes left). So for 9 years I thought that was what silver swedes were supposed to look like. Kinda crazy.

 

[Papaye]

Hi.

Man, I gotta say even for me this stuff's a little hard to follow/figure out just by looking at pics.

Ah, ah! Never too late to learn!

I was so confused, when I found myself with this duckling... : I had never seen a Splash duckling, so I thought I had a (somewhat light) Snowy (Harlequin) coloured duckling...!!

I thought I read somewhere that a duck can carry the brown/buff gene without displaying it.

From what I have learned : yes, they can.

For example I once incubated some hatching eggs SUPPOSEDLY from a flock that was all Black Copper Marans and when the eggs hatched, I got a rooster that was a Blue Copper Marans. I'm not sure how the heck I got a blue out of an all black flock unless the person I bought the eggs from lied about what was in their flock, like the pictures they had wasn't of their own flock, or they had a blue one in the flock but it wasn't in the pictures. I only saw black ones in the pictures.

In fact, your seller was probably not lying : after all, it is possible to get a Blue Copper Marans chick from two Black Copper parents...

I can guess some of their birds' ascendant could have been a Blue Copper Marans, and your seller not know about it...?

I'm not sure if they can carry the color blue and not display it if they're black.

They can.

So I'm just not sure why I got a blue one, but he ended up being the best rooster I ever had in my flock.

Huuuh... Blue Copper Marans are so beautiful...!!

Only had him 3 years and I really miss him.

What happened to him?

Btw, your birds are beautiful!

Thank you!!

But have your seen your girl?! She is perfect.

They are the only pics I took of them.

Now maybe you guys can see why I'm a bit confused about what color my new duckling is...

I honestly did not even know ducklings could be born with WHITE fluff before seeing your pictures...!!

There seems to just not be enough pictures of the silver ones, but especially the other colors too like lilac and lavender.

Yeah... you can find almost everything on the Internet, but apparently, NOT pictures of ducks' rare colours...!!

(I still don't know the difference between Fawn, Faery Fawn, and Cinnamon Indian Runners!)

If anyone out there ever gets, or suspects they have those colors in their ducklings, please take pictures so people can learn what it looks like.

I might have some in my new ducklings, but it is not confirmed; and so, I should refrain to post pictures of them for the time being...