Duck Genetic Question

[TK Poultry]

I had an idea strike me the other day when I was reading about the Dun gene in chickens. I read that the Dun gene works like the BBS gene. When you mate black to khaki you get dun. (i think). That is when the idea struck. Wonder if I take a Khaki Campbell hen and mate her to a Black Swedish drake. Would that produce a dun baby. I would love to create a line of Khaki, Dun, and Black Swedish ducks..... but where does platnium come in....I also read a thread about platnium sumatras. Input would be greatly appriciated

 

[CityChicker]

The genes in ducks with similar names do not work exactly the same as in chickens. In ducks, Khaki is dusky with the addition of the sex-linked recessive brown. You would be able to do a sex-linked cross if the male was Khaki and the hen was black and you would get "chocolate" hens in the offspring as the sex-linked brown plus extended black results in chocolate. There is no Dun per se in ducks (nor a "platinum" that I am aware of-editing to add- in domestic Mallard-derived ducks anyway). Creating Khaki and Chocolate though is quite easy.

 

[TK Poultry]

Well i didnt want to call it chocolate per se because it really wouldnt be the chocolate gene would it. So what would the out come be if i crossed her with him? What would i get if I mated the offspring together?

 

[CityChicker]

That is what I am saying, greencastle- you would get chocolate, but only if your sexes were reversed. Chocolate in ducks is the result of extended black (which you would get from the Swedish and is dominant over the dusky of the Campbell) combined with sex-linked recessive brown (which the female crosses would get from the male Khaki). This cross is a very common cross going the direction of the male being Khaki (and would have to be to see the colors mix in the F1 birds). It has been the partial basis for several of the egg-laying hybrid breeds.

It you did the reciprocal cross, your Black Swedish drake on Khaki hen, you should get nothing but Black Bibbed like the Swedish because that should be dominant over the Khaki (dusky plus brown). In all likelihood, you will get a few offspring with some dusky showing through the black, but for all intents and purposes, they will be Black Bibbed. In the second generation, you will get a variation of color including some Chocolate Bibbed when the sex-linked brown from the F1 crosses pops back up.

Anyway, I hope this helps. It is confusing because the genes in ducks are actually named similarly in chickens, but are not really the same at all. In chickens, "choc" is sex-linked and results in chocolate. In ducks, chocolate is the result of extended black (E/E) and sex-linked brown (d/d). The Khaki-Dun (Dun sometimes incorrectly called "chocolate") sequence in chickens is the result of a separate incompletely dominant gene (that I believe is actually "d" as well, someone that works with the gene in chickens can elaborate). The differences in ducks is that both color series are the result of only one gene- sex-linked recessive brown. There is no incompletely dominant gene that creates the sequence of browns you are looking to do. That and the cross you are looking at doing will eventually result in lots of mis-marked birds.

In ducks-
Khaki- dusky mallard with sex-linked brown
Chocolate- extended black plus sex-linked brown
Dun- non existent

 

[CityChicker]

Quote:
That is the thing- there is no "chocolate" gene in ducks, nor is there a possibility to do a sequence with Khaki-Dun like in chickens. You would need some sort of incompletely dominant gene in ducks to do that and one simply does not exist. Chocolate in ducks is not the result of one gene, it is the result of two genes combined (black and brown). This is the color you will eventually get because it is ultimately what you are crossing (Black Swedish=Black and Khaki Campbell=Brown). The direction you are going though with the Black bird being the drake, you will not get any browns until the second generation. What you will virtually never be able to get is a sequence in browns that acts like the blue sequence because the gene is not incompletely dominant.

Trust me on this- if you try to apply the chicken genes to ducks you will end up banging your head up against a wall. Forget everything you have read about the similarly named genes in chickens. It is not at all the same in ducks, even though the names are similar.