Muscovy genetics/colors??

[farmdude]

Sorry about all the muscovy questions, I'm new to them and have a lot to learn. I purchased 6 "pied chocolate" ducklings off Craig's list last summer. When I got them i didn't think they looked chocolate or pied. I seen the parents and they are. They ducklings feathered out black with white bids. Any ideas why? I purchased a real chocolate one and a blue one a few weeks later. I was planning on breeding them to the black ones hoping to get other colors. Will I?

 

[ian4379]

hi, first of all ask away, thats how you learn. and remember that there is no such thing as a silly question.

are you sure of the parentage? chocolate into chocloate should give you chocolate ducklings.

regarding the colours you'll have to be more specific. what colour is the drake your using? chocolate is a sex linked gene so it matters if the drake is chocolate or carries the chocolate gene. this will affect what colour the offspring will be.

 

[farmdude]

The woman I got the first 6 from said the pair of chocolates were locked up together, so there was no way another drake was the father. The hen looked mostly white with tan, not really chocolate looking spots. I don't know the parents of the second 2. They are all around 2-3 months old, to young to sex. So I'm not sure who I will be pairing with who come spring. I'm just planning on not letting the siblings breed with each other.

 

[learycow]

I am curious how the muscovy coloring works too. I have 3 black and white pied, 2 hens and one drake (one hen is barred too) and you should see the color ducklings I got from them this summer!
I got 1 silver pied, 2 pure silver, 2 pure black, 3 black and white pied, a bunch of solid chocolates and chocolate pied, and 6 white (they all had black spots on their heads, though one was had a chocolate spot). And that was a clutch form each of the 2 hens!
I was hoping for some barred, but didn't get any. I have a hen on a clutch due to hatch next week. Same parents, so I'm anxious to see what colors I get this time around!

 

[ian4379]

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this one is easier - chocolate is a recessive gene so both your drake and duck must carry chocolate. some of your birds must be blue and not black as silver is two doses of blue.

this site is helpful http://www.muscovyduckcentral.com/genetics.html

 

[learycow]

Could it be lavender instead of silver then?
Here's a pic of the two hens and drake. They don't look blue to me!

I don't have a picture of the ducklings, but I can try to get on on here tomorrow or Sunday.

 

[farmdude]

Quote:
It maybe the angle of the photo, but it sure looks like your birds are smiling! Either way, I'm sure they are happy!

 

[ian4379]

Quote:
hi, interesting, definately not blue!

all three of them look chocolate or bronze/sepia to me. that would mean the most likely explanation would be they all carry the lavendar gene like you said. what a bonus!

 

[learycow]

Ok, so here are the silvers (or lavenders, you tell me!) that I got from the black and white pied hens and drake.
There is a solid silver and a pied silver (you can see her head sticking out in the back on the left).
As you can see, there are also a bunch of whites (some with black heads, one with a chocolate head).
And on the right there is a solid black and a black pied.

I also got 3 chocolates like the one in this picture. (2 are pied)

 

[AquaEyes]

Those don't look like silvers. They are lavenders. Look here to get a good idea of what the colors look like, and remember that "lavender" = "self blue."

From darkest to lightest in the black series, the single-gene colors are Black --> Blue --> Lavender (= self blue) --> Silver.

"Silver" is the same in muscovies (genetically) as "splash" in chickens -- a black bird with two copies of the Blue gene. To get a silver, you'd need to have either Blue X Blue or Blue X Silver.

Lavender is a recessive mutation, and you can get it from two birds that don't "look" lavender but are split to it -- in other words, they each have one copy of the gene. To show the lavender color, the birds must have two copies of the gene.

Chocolate can be carried by the male but not the female, because it is sex-linked recessive. Males need two copies to show "chocolate" but females need only one copy. So if you got some chocolate birds from two non-chocolate parents, it means your male is split to chocolate, and the chocolate birds are all females.

Chocolate can also combine with Lavender to give Cream. These birds will be almost as pale as a Silver but will have a pale brownish cast to their feathers instead of being a pale gray. If you got Cream babies from two black parents, they will also be female (because to be Cream, they must show Chocolate as well as Lavender, and only the daughters would show Chocolate).

If you got any babies that don't show the brownish color associated with the Chocolate gene, then at least one parent must not have been chocolate. The breeder may well have locked the pair up, but perhaps not for a long enough time for the female to have "purified" if she was exposed to a different male previously.