Mulards?

[insanity]

I got three Muscovy ducklings this spring and was thinking of 2 or 3 daily layers(hens only) to go with them. My question is what breed of mallard would get along and cross best with the Muscovy? From what I've read the hybrids make great meat birds.

Thanks.

 

[Kevin565]

Pekins are okay layers and are often used in the cross for better meat birds.

 

[insanity]

Thanks I was looking at Campbell and Harlequin for a bit of color. I suppose plain white would be easy to find at least.

 

[Kevin565]

You might be able to get away with the WHs but I think Campbells might be too small to handle a scovy drake.

 

[bebee]

Pekins

 

[insanity]

I was a little worried about size on the campbells. I'll look into the Pekin some more.

 

[laughingdog]

Male scovy to female peking, are what are used only, for improved quicker meatier mulards. rest wasted effort and can actually and have heard from friend, actually cause multiple to all deaths of non scovy kept with a single scovy drake (broken neck, pelvis, legs, drowning, ect). Sorry to be so harsh, but otherwise debates rage, so state what has happened bluntly. same guy guy also had the scovy accidentally kill three swans and two geese. his pkings were ok oddly though, so assume true about crossings.

 

[Frank Phinster]

This year I had to seperate my pekins from the scovy drake because he took way too much interest in the pekin duck.
Her plumage was in a bad state and for a while she had trouble walking.
Muscovy drakes are more vicious than mallards when it comes to mating and while female scovies are made for this rough treatment ( although mine appearently prefer to be mounted by my runner drake...) female domestic mallards are not. So if you want to produce moulards I would advise to get a whole flock of females to distribute the strain equally among them.

 

[insanity]

I was thinking of 1 drake to 2 muscovy hens and 4-6 mallard hens.I figured 8 to 1 was a good ratio.

 

[iambebabeba]

Check this out. It has some great Info about mule ducks or mullards

http://www.feathersite.com/Poultry/Ducks/Musc/Mule.html