Does anyone here specialize in any particular breed/color?
I don't mean just having a couple of ducks that you breed....but does anyone have an actual breeding program? If so, please share:
Type and color variety.
- How many ducks do you have?
- How many do you hatch, and how/when do you select your keepers?
- What do you do with your extras? Especially drakes...
- How do you advertise yourself as a reputable breeder of quality ducks, rather than the gal down the street that has a couple of ducks and a styrofoam incubator?
I'll start:
I have Indian runners. My colors are grey, blue fawn, pastel, trout, blue trout, saxony, and harlequin. These are my "good ducks". I also have some pekins, but they are just ordinary hatchery ducks. I hatch about 100 ducklings a year, and raise them all up till they are in at least their full adult plumage, but usually till the next spring so I can evaluate how well they are laying (it is something, IMHO, that runner duck people haven't been paying close enough attention to: they are, after all, supposed to be a laying breed...) Then I select my breeders. The extras get sold. I usually have no problem finding homes for the hens, but the drakes are a different story. Some of them find homes, and others get sent to the auction, where I get maybe a couple of dollars for such a high quality bird that I've got almost a year's worth of work into.
As far as advertising, that's a hard one. How do I differentiate myself from Maria down the street with feed-store fawn and white runners? Haven't figured that one out yet. The APA doesn't recognize most of the colors that I breed, so poultry shows are practically useless (though I suppose I could display some breeding trios). The people that have come looking for quality ducks usually want them for their 4H kids, so they need standard colors.....
And now that I finally have harlequin runners (yet another unrecognized color), I will be running into the same issues.
Oh well, we do it for the love of the ducks, right?
I don't mean just having a couple of ducks that you breed....but does anyone have an actual breeding program? If so, please share:
Type and color variety.
- How many ducks do you have?
- How many do you hatch, and how/when do you select your keepers?
- What do you do with your extras? Especially drakes...
- How do you advertise yourself as a reputable breeder of quality ducks, rather than the gal down the street that has a couple of ducks and a styrofoam incubator?
I'll start:
I have Indian runners. My colors are grey, blue fawn, pastel, trout, blue trout, saxony, and harlequin. These are my "good ducks". I also have some pekins, but they are just ordinary hatchery ducks. I hatch about 100 ducklings a year, and raise them all up till they are in at least their full adult plumage, but usually till the next spring so I can evaluate how well they are laying (it is something, IMHO, that runner duck people haven't been paying close enough attention to: they are, after all, supposed to be a laying breed...) Then I select my breeders. The extras get sold. I usually have no problem finding homes for the hens, but the drakes are a different story. Some of them find homes, and others get sent to the auction, where I get maybe a couple of dollars for such a high quality bird that I've got almost a year's worth of work into.
As far as advertising, that's a hard one. How do I differentiate myself from Maria down the street with feed-store fawn and white runners? Haven't figured that one out yet. The APA doesn't recognize most of the colors that I breed, so poultry shows are practically useless (though I suppose I could display some breeding trios). The people that have come looking for quality ducks usually want them for their 4H kids, so they need standard colors.....
And now that I finally have harlequin runners (yet another unrecognized color), I will be running into the same issues.
Oh well, we do it for the love of the ducks, right?
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i am 1 on the 2 people in north america with true bred black mallards, never crossed with anything to become black and come from wild mallard bloodlines. It happened with a mallard pair i put into a breeding pen/aviary in 2011 i waited 6 weeks before i let her sit on any eggs so i knew that they would be the males, his name was drake, Once she hatched them she had 5 healthy grey(normal) mallard babies and one pure dark baby, i thought hmm strange and i thought she would grow out of it and she didnt. I have tried letting her have babies multiple times and onc eyear she had some black babies but she hatched them at the pond and not in an aviary so they were taken by turtles. She then had more eggs the next summer and i hatched them they were normal grey mallard pattern and grew up to be beautiful. So then just last summer i got some of her eggs and incubated them myself.again and she had 1 black baby a girl named nixie and spunky who is normal mallard grey pattern. because of there rareity and sable feathers they sell for a lot if i ever decided to sell them.
