Muscovys, black to white breeding? chick order timing?

[HomesteadNowhere]

Last week I got four muscovys from a neighbor who had a friend that was overrun after theirs hatched back to back to back all season up to now basically. I'm not enthusiastic about the way they keep their birds and managed to get there right when they got em home and picked out a few for myself with minimal interaction with the neighbors property.

Sadly lost two of the ducks. I had thought they had all been lost but two escaped and were loose. Today I managed to catch them, totally unprepared, with some help from my border collie. They are now setup in a cage while I build something else for them.

They are about 6ish wks old. I think just blacks. I was considering ordering some white muscovys from freedomrangerhatchery next year. It seems unlikely that these two will be a male/female pair and muscovys seem to be pretty reliably broody, my plan was to use them for hatching chicken eggs for me, secondarily for eggs.

I don't know what these two have genetically so I was curious if there is a guess for most likely color(s) I'd get breeding them to white?
I don't need lots of them so I'm hoping to plan with a friend to split the order to meet the 15 minimum.

Do muscovys always not mature and lay/breed til the following spring? It seems like it would be best to order ducklings in midsummer, get them transitioned outside quickly, and less time feeding them through til they are productive.

Thanks!

 

[ProudRedneck]

I have a Muscovy hen that just turned 6 months old on the 20th and just laid her first egg on the 23rd (3 days ago) and she's been offering herself for mating with my SA drake (same age BTW) since she was 5 months old....I have heard and read the same information you are mentioning and perhaps my hen is an outlier but I can tell you from personal experience it's not impossible.

 

[Miss Lydia]

Mine have always hatched one year and didn't start breeding or laying till the foIlowing spring. I am not sure a Muscovy will be able to hatch chicks their eggs aren't as strong as Muscovy eggs and may not take the weight or rolling around that ducks do to their eggs. Or accidentally getting stepped on.

 

[Canadian Wind]

So far as colours go, if yours are black, when bred to a white you should get all black pied (depending on what the whites' genetics are, which is usually a double pied black).

If one of the blacks is a male split to Chocolate, you'll get a possibility of pied Chocolate females, and pied black males split to Chocolate.

AND, if a white happens to be base Blue, then you will get blues and blacks, again, pied.

If you happen to have Pied blacks, then breeding to whites will give you both whites and pieds.

Hope this wasn't too confusing! I didn't even touch on the Lavender gene.

 

[Luv Ducks]

You can order just two unsexed from Metzer, they now offer both black and white ones. You will pay more because of shipping and only ordering two but won't have a bunch to get rid of if you get drakes. My Mules were really strange. They came out looking like Mallards with yellow splotched feet and the yellow on them brighter than a Mallards. They turned a beautiful lavender and then went on to having a Rouen looking head and a beautiful gray barred body which is what my Hen I kept still has. They said 60% of Mule hatches are Drakes and I got two Drakes and a Hen so I guess that was pretty much right. Good luck with your decision. My gal Muscovy is over a year old but I gather eggs so she has never gone broody.