Looking for Chocolate Swedish in United States

[SparkyCrows]

or even some eggs from a swedish with a rust fault... Or hatchery stock with rust? Anyone?

Yeah, I know offspring from this project won't meet the SOP. No, I don't care - I'm just playing around trying to get a brown with a nice white bib. This is a personal satisfaction kind of thing.

 

[Oregon Blues]

Some of my Swedish are split for lavender and the ducklings are a cocoa color. That's along ways from chocolate and they are a silvery color when grown. There's a brown gene in their somewhere, but I have no idea how you could separate it out of ducks who are double for the blue gene.

I haven't heard of any chocolate Swedish. In fact, I am not remembering any ducks that come in chocolate except for Muscovy. There is a very good chance that any Swedish you find that are chocolate are not purebred Swedish, so you might as well do a cross breeding project to try to get what you want.

Oh, wait. Runners come in chocolate. You could get the color from there.

If you are cross breeding to get a duck that looks like a Swedish in chocolate color, please do not represent them as purebred Swedish even after you get them to visually look like Swedish.

 

[Wynette]

Some of my Swedish are split for lavender and the ducklings are a cocoa color. That's along ways from chocolate and they are a silvery color when grown. There's a brown gene in their somewhere, but I have no idea how you could separate it out of ducks who are double for the blue gene.

I haven't heard of any chocolate Swedish. In fact, I am not remembering any ducks that come in chocolate except for Muscovy. There is a very good chance that any Swedish you find that are chocolate are not purebred Swedish, so you might as well do a cross breeding project to try to get what you want.

Oh, wait. Runners come in chocolate. You could get the color from there.

If you are cross breeding to get a duck that looks like a Swedish in chocolate color, please do not represent them as purebred Swedish even after you get them to visually look like Swedish.

Goodness, folks do this in chickens all the time. Once they breed true, they are the "bred for breed" - must not be the same in ducks? Not trying to start an argument, just wondering!

 

[StevenW.]

Some of my Swedish are split for lavender and the ducklings are a cocoa color. That's along ways from chocolate and they are a silvery color when grown. There's a brown gene in their somewhere, but I have no idea how you could separate it out of ducks who are double for the blue gene.

I haven't heard of any chocolate Swedish. In fact, I am not remembering any ducks that come in chocolate except for Muscovy. There is a very good chance that any Swedish you find that are chocolate are not purebred Swedish, so you might as well do a cross breeding project to try to get what you want.

Oh, wait. Runners come in chocolate. You could get the color from there.

If you are cross breeding to get a duck that looks like a Swedish in chocolate color, please do not represent them as purebred Swedish even after you get them to visually look like Swedish.

I agree.

You could always breed together a chocolate colored bird with a white bird and I would assume you would get bibbeds and etc.

I have a Chocolate Call drake with a White call duck and I'm collecting eggs to incubate since they are laying again as the weather is cooler. Very interested to see what the offspring looks like!

 

[70%cocoa]

If you want to breed chocolate bibbed birds it should be fairly easy. Get a Khaki Campbell drake (not a Dark Campbell but a Khaki) and breed him to black Swedish females. A Khaki Campbell drake has two doses of the Chocolate gene that you are after. You will get some ducklings that are chocolate and some that are black. All the chocolate ones will be female and all the black ones will be male (only for this first generation though).

If you use a Khaki Campbell female and a black Swedish male it will all take an extra generation or two. A Khaki female has only one dose of chocolate and all the offspring in the first generation will be black. You'd have to use the male offspring only (NOT the female offspring who will have no chocolate) and breed him to your other black Swedish females and then some of the female ducklings (not all) in that generation will be chocolate. All that will take longer.

Now, all that is how it works in theory. Colour inheritence doesn't always play by the books. But trying what I suggested is your best chance of getting chocolate bibed birds.

Oregon Blues - if you are getting lavender then you have the chocolate gene in there somewhere. Now and again you may get some chocolate birds (that would be black if they didn't have the choc gene). It is a separate gene from the blue gene so to weed it out just aovid breeding from any birds that produce chocolate or lavender offspring. Over time you will get rid of it, if that it what you want.

 

[SparkyCrows]

This is fantastic information! Sounds like there's a couple of approaches I can take. I've been enjoying working on a couple of chicken projects and am looking forward to getting back into ducks. I couldn't resist a few blues at the farm store this spring but (not surprisingly) the colors and patterning isn't as nice as what I would want for a breeding project. It's ok. People around here are excited to buy duck eggs to eat and I have time to tinker with the genes. A friend of mine got me some swedish blue supposedly split to lavender hatching eggs -- nice birthday present

 

[70%cocoa]

A friend of mine got me some swedish blue supposedly split to lavender hatching eggs

That got me thinking (as well as Oregon Blues comment about birds split for lavender). I'd be interested to know exactly what 'blue split to lavender' means here. I guess it is a way of saying that the drake involved is blue, carrying one dose of chocolate.

Not quite the same way that people use the 'split to X' term in chickens, e.g. "My Wyandotte rooster is silver split to gold" (i.e. has one copy of the dominant allele Silver and one copy of the recessive allele Gold).

 

[Oregon Blues]

[[[.........Goodness, folks do this in chickens all the time. Once they breed true, they are the "bred for breed" - must not be the same in ducks?....]]]]]

Well, not entirely.

When chicken breeders are trying to establish a new color, everyone who breeds that breed of chicken knows that crosses are being done, and the offspring are always labeled as "New Color Breed". Crossed chicks that do not fit into the new color scheme are not sold as purebred chicks.

It is also considered to be dishonest to cross a leghorn with a Wyandote, and then pass off any red chicks as Rhode Island Red. Just because it looks like a Rhode Island Red doesn't mean it is a Rhode Island Red.

The Swedish duck is a breed that is hundreds of years old. if a breeder crosses Swedish with something else and passes off ducklings that look like Swedish (which they might in only one generation), then that will seriously mess up anyone trying to breed those ducks, thinking they are Swedish. Just because a duck looks like a Swedish doesn't mean it is a Swedish. If they are crossbreds, they are mutts and they will breed like mutts with random genes.

It is not common for duck breeders to do cross breeding trying to establish new colors. Therefore anyone who is cross breeding has a moral obligation to inform buyers that the ducklings are cross bred.

 

[Oregon Blues]

70% cocoa, "split" means the bird is carrying a recessive gene that does not show in the phenotype.

 

[rollyard]

In some instances pure breeds have been re-created using other breeds because they were never introduced in the first instance, or have been lost over time. For example, I believe the Brahma fowl has been re-created in Australia through cross-breeding other breeds that have contributed suitable traits. In some instances, very low numbers & shrinking gene pools in one breed have necessitated the introduction of another breed to improve/increase viability. A specimen or specimens representing a breed/variety cannot really be classified as a breed/variety in their own right until they breed true for breed/variety traits.

I have always found the term "split" confusing, but maybe that is just me, or maybe the way it is sometimes written? For example, when somone says that they have a Cinnamon split Lavender in Guinea Fowl I envision a phenotypically Cinnamon bird that has hidden one dose of recessive lavender factor. Yet, I have trouble grasping this concept because to my understanding "split" refers to two alternative forms of a gene (alleles) @ the same locus on a pair of chromosomes, & cinnamon & lavender factors aren't alleles (in the species I am aware of to my knowledge). A split lavender as such, where the species has only the two alleles @ the lavender locus available (one more dominant wild-type gene & its recessive mutated alternative form, lavender) would be wild-type split for lavender @ that locus. The "Wyandotte rooster is silver split to gold" example given above is technically correct (to me) in that gold & silver factors in chickens are alleles @ the same locus, ie, S/s+ (silver split for gold). Less confusing I think to say that I have a Cinnamon Guinea that carries hidden lavender (heterozygous wild-type for lavender I/i).