Domestic Teal - the new little wonders of the world

[morgan mc]

I have 4 of these little ducks I hatched from eggs I ordered. They are very teal like in size, looks, and actions. The pictures do not do them justice. They are totally different from a call duck or a mallard. In 40+ years of raising ducks these have me more excited than anything I have ever had. Plus with the high cost of feed they are cheap to keep.

 

[BYC-user-174785]

I also agree with Bemba and Dylan Duck Man. I raise wild ducks, including a few teal species. Your ducks are nice, but I would much rather buy an actual teal for that money. $100 a bird could almost buy a Falcated Teal! You probably do not need a permit for them, right? You do need one for teal...

 

[wolfwhyte]

Last spring I hatched one of my favorite ducks. She is a sold blue which is a black duck with one blue gene. I kept only the smallest drakes again, I am looking forward to the next breeding season. Some of these little ducks are silent. I would like to work with the silent ones because I know of several people who would like to keep call ducks but they can't because of their neighbors. So I have decided only to keep silent ducks. Eggs produced in 2013 will only be from silent ducks. That does not mean you will only hatch silent ducks because I can not tell if the drakes are genetically silent.

 

[flyingmonkeypoop]

I took this information from the website. I don't think I can give the address of the domestic teal website becasue eggs are offered on it.

History of Domestic Teal



I started working with Domestic teal in 1990. I was working for S. Dillon Ripley in Litchfield, CT. He had numerous types of waterfowl that were all kept together. Every year there were hybrids among the species. Mallard hybrids were common. Most are sterile, but I had kept a few of the teal hybrids to see if some were not. Some produced fertile eggs, and most were a mixture of patterns and not very pretty except when a domestic color pattern appeared. Them the results were very impressive. The Australian Spotted was the most common appearing color pattern. You hear of the Australian Spotted ducks appearing several times over the last century, so it is my belief, this has happened, at least, several times before.

It was not until around 2000 that I thought of trying something new. I crossed call ducks with teal. I them crossed the young ones together. I developed some very amazing ducks, but unlike the ones I had produced before, they laid few eggs and were not very hardy. Call ducks, by genetics, have many health problems. The small ones are notoriously hard to reproduce. Even though, I produced them in several color patterns and sizes, they were not hardy and did not reproduce well.

Missing the ones I had before, I went back to using mallards, and I tried again in 2006. I produced many hybrids the first year. The first hybrids are usually pretty large, but when I bred them together the following year. The sizes ranged from large mallard size to really small teal size ducks. I would only keep the smallest and most colorful drakes to breed from the following year, and the body size of my flock of little ducks just keep getting smaller. Unfortunately, I would have to repeat the process over again every time I want to introduce another color.

Today I have a flock of duck that carry a lot of color genes. Some are expressed, and some are not, so the possibilities are great when eggs are hatched of getting many different colors. Many colors are unique to the domestic teal because of some remaining teal genes. For example, there is a zoomorphic trait where drakes are duck feathered like in the North American Black duck; the drakes look like the ducks. For example, pastel drakes are solid buff like pastel ducks. The trait is co-dominant.

I am working to produce them in several more colors including white, pied and buff.

However, I am the most excited about working on producing domestic teal with the Indian Runner stance. Mini Pins about a foot high. It will be a couple of years, or more, before I will have some for sale

Not sure if you're on facebook or not, but you should join the hybridology page and share your work there (https://www.facebook.com/groups/659116877451094/?notif_t=group_r2j_approved). Anyone who is interested about this kind of thing should check it out as well, lots of great information

 

[wclawrence]

This is an old post, but I thought if dig it back up.
What's the latest on this project?
I got some eggs this spring and raised two of these hybrids, very interesting birds.

 

[pigeons in ak]

Does anyone still breed these?