Establishing a New Flock

[N Good]

I am trying to establish a flock for eggs and meat. The idea is to keep 2 hens and a drake through the winter, hatch out 10 ducklings in the spring to raise as broilers and potentially another 10 in the fall, saving 2 new hens and a drake to eventually replace the breeding trio.
I bought 10 Silver Appleyard ducklings from Cackle Hatchery this spring as they seemed a good fit for my goals. My plan was to keep all the hens through this summer and butcher all but 1 or 2 Drake's at 8 weeks of age, butchering off all but 2 hens when egg production decreases in the fall.

Here is the question:
How do I decide which birds to cull at 8 weeks? I'm making a huge guess / investment in my flock on that one drake I keep without any knowledge of his lineage other than that I got him from a reputable hatchery. I'm hoping to keep this flock for years to come, and much of my initial genes will be coming from this drake.
So, how do I make a choice like that? What factors do I consider? Or is this a poor way of approaching it and should I be keeping all 10 birds through the summer and choosing my breeding drake in the fall and butchering off the others at 18-20 weeks when there's another window for butchering?

 

[Knighstar679]

The one flaw I can see in your plan is you could run into genetic problems with producing ducklings a few years down the road with out introducing new blood into it. I have a friend that did this and over the years she has had lower and lower egg production and now her youngest birds eggs don't seem able to be fertilized easily.

You may want to plan for adding a trio of hens every spring just to have new blood in your program.

 

[N Good]

Knighstar, how many ducks and Drake's would I need to run in my flock to protect from that? I'm figuring I might need to add new blood in 5 generations or so just to protect from heavy inbreeding. My understanding is that line breeding as I'll be doing can actually be beneficial to a flock as long as close attention is paid to not overdoing it. But so much will depend on the genetics of those first birds.

 

[Knighstar679]

Knighstar, how many ducks and Drake's would I need to run in my flock to protect from that? I'm figuring I might need to add new blood in 5 generations or so just to protect from heavy inbreeding. My understanding is that line breeding as I'll be doing can actually be beneficial to a flock as long as close attention is paid to not overdoing it. But so much will depend on the genetics of those first birds.

For me I am trying to get a new flock of Black East Indie going. So to prevent inbreeding problems I am trying to have three sources of genetics in my flock. Then I can add new genetics every couple of years. Choosing to cull or find new homes for ducks that don’t have the traits I am looking for.

For you that might mean watching who lays the most eggs or the biggest eggs And so on and so forth.

I have read line breeding can do well as well but you have to have that right genetic stock to start. Keep in mind some of the hens might not lay right away until they are between 4-7 months old or they might wait till spring. Depends on the bird.

 

[nao57]

There's all kinds of things you can think about actually.

But its a matter of what matters most to you.

Here are a few things to think about. But some of them might not be genetic;

Ease of access to replacement stock, cost of replacement cost, quietness and behavior, aggression, size, how loud they are and how close your neighbors are (and how forgiving), size of eggs (which is affected by breed), cost of feed, are you selling the meat to others or just using it for friends and family, can you build the pens yourself and how sturdy will they be?

Other considerations; ducks may take 4 to 5 months before they start laying eggs. So you wouldn't be able to really effectively start ducklings when Spring starts, but instead probably a month into winter in order to have them finishing their growth right when Spring starts. If you don't do it that then you wouldn't have eggs until late fall, which might be hard for you if you really want eggs.

At the same time, you'd want a garage or shed or something to put them in to grow in while its winter so that you don't have to smell duck manure in your house. (I did this because it was too cold outside when I first got my ducklings. It was OK until about 4 weeks old and then I couldn't stand the smell anymore.)

Do you have a fairly secure yard area for them with fencing, so you won't worry about them while you are at work, etc? If you are working a lot and away from the house also, then you'll also need to have larger water containers for them, so that when you get to the high summer heat you won't find them dehydrated or worse. (But you can often find things for cheap, and don't have to buy them. Like for example a lot of people use cut in half big water cube containers for agriculture. They are called IBC water tanks, but I think they sell for cheap used, or when people are going to throw them away. Actually, I want to find one of these but the thrift store near me that has them is still closed from Coronavirus.)

I liked what the others said also. I'm not an expert but just thought I'd bring up a few things.

 

[TomCahalan]

Your goal is to eat drakes and duck eggs. So you want to select for the best meat drake and the best laying ducks.

At eight weeks weigh your drakes. Retain the heaviest one for future breeding. This is the easy part.

Next you want to determine which ducks are the best layers. I think that you would want to focus on ducks that start laying early and continue laying the longest. Here is how you could do it:

Once you get the first egg, start caging your ducks separately every night. Give them colored ankle bands so that you can tell them apart. After a week give give each duck a score, 1 point per egg. Now you can take a break from separate caging, you will need it.

Once egg production starts to drop off in the fall (let's say that you were consistently getting 5 eggs per day, but now you got 5 eggs over the course of two days), cage them again. Again, each duck gets one point per egg.

Pick your top two layers based on score. If there is a tie you can break it in various ways. You could pick one duck that laid well early in the season and one duck that laid well later. You could try to pick the smaller duck to get better feed-to-egg conversion (unless it is laying small eggs).

Now you have your trio of best ducks. Don't replace these ducks for several years. With only three ducks you are going to end up with inbred ducks in just a few generations, so you want to stretch out each generation to be as long as possible. Keep producing ducklings from this trio year after year, until their fertility drops. Only then should you select from among their children.

 

[N Good]

Tom, thanks for the thorough answer, that's exactly what I was looking for. I read in David Holderread's book that egg laying traits tend to be passed through the drake, so that got me scared a bit, but I guess I have no control over that, and if my best egg laying hens are producing my next drakes maybe when I'm looking for genetic diversity in a few generations I order sexed hens and then it will be easier to cull those that aren't good layers, adding genetics to the flock without decreasing my egg laying capabilities. It will be a learning curve, but the plan you laid out makes sense.

Nao, thanks for your response. I already have a setup and am familiar with the basics, I've raised for meat, I'm just new to breeding a flock for characteristics I want to keep rather than just butchering. I bought purebred silver appleyards and am hoping to maintain a genetically healthy flock, which is an overload of information in trying to process.

 

[N Good]

Knighstar, sounds like a good plan. When I need to order ducklings again I am planning on going to a different hatchery so that I am actually increasing genetic diversity, although it appears most / all hatcheries in the us with silver appleyards came from Holderread's stock, so not sure how much genetic diversity there is in general.

What drew you to the Black East Indie?

 

[Knighstar679]

Knighstar, sounds like a good plan. When I need to order ducklings again I am planning on going to a different hatchery so that I am actually increasing genetic diversity, although it appears most / all hatcheries in the us with silver appleyards came from Holderread's stock, so not sure how much genetic diversity there is in general.

What drew you to the Black East Indie?

i was looking for a small duck that could be used for herding practice. But I did not want calls at the time. I stumbled across the Black East Indie which look like a small version of Cayugas which I like as well. Their personality has been great.

 

[TomCahalan]

I read in David Holderread's book that egg laying traits tend to be passed through the drake

I think that is more of a thing in large-scale breeding operations that are that the top of a pyramid. Let's say that you have a core of a few dozen drakes and ducks, these are your best. The core generates hundreds of ducklings. The best are used to replace members of the core. The rest are added to the bulk breeding stock of hundreds of birds, who then produce the thousands of ducklings for sale to farms. Think of a pyramid.

Since you always have many females for every male, it is much harder for a young drake to earn his way into the core. Consider juveniles. Let's say that they are 90th percentile according to the scoring system. Maybe that is enough for the duck to earn her way into the core. The young drake doesn't make the cut though, so he is off to the bulk breeding stock.

So now look at the bulk. Where are their quality improvements coming from? From those 90th percentile drakes. The ducks that come down from the core improve the quality of the bulk stock, but not as much as the drakes.

Quality in the pyramid flows downhill, and the drakes flowing down are better than the ducks. The drakes have more impact as well.

I can see this coming from the common wisdom. Let's say that you and your neighbor are chicken farmers. Maybe your chickens are a little better than his. Now you both buy new roosters from a poultry breeder. You went cheap whereas he bought the best. In the next generation his chickens are better than yours. That's how things like "egg laying comes from the rooster/drake" get started. It isn't true in general, but it might be a useful rule of thumb for typical conditions.

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There is also no logical reason for egg-laying capability to come more from drakes than ducks. That's not how DNA works. Most traits come equally from both parents. Exceptions are rare, though they are less rare in F1 interspecific hybrids.