Not really Swedish Blues?

[corriemartin]

I don't think my Swedish blues are really Swedish blues. I mean, they're gray and all, but they don't have solid bibs at ALL. Some of them have barely any white at all, and even the ones who have more white are all blotchy. And one of my two drakes is developing a lot of brown, and I know Swedish blues aren't supposed to have brown. What do you think?

 

[AltonaAcres]

Probably just hatchery quality..............they don't usually breed to the standard.

 

[EggSighted4Life]

I don't think my Swedish blues are really Swedish blues. I mean, they're gray and all, but they don't have solid bibs at ALL. Some of them have barely any white at all, and even the ones who have more white are all blotchy. And one of my two drakes is developing a lot of brown, and I know Swedish blues aren't supposed to have brown. What do you think?
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What most folks don't know is that breeding perfect birds with NO color leakage is very challenging.

Select the one with the best bib and breed from there.. Selecting and keeping only the best of the best for every generation and eating or selling the rest... to get where you wanna be.

Can't expect show quality birds unless that's what you paid for which cannot be determined until grown.. because even show quality parent stock still gotta give some of their less desirable genes to their offspring, unfortunately.

I don't keep ducks anymore and have never familiarized myself with if they have a standard of perfection or not.. but in chickens some of the ways we can determine if the breed is what it's supposed to be is by looking at overall features.. including.. foot and leg color, beak or bill color, eye color, weight, body shape.. are the ones I can think of that would correlate most to ducks perhaps.

It's really quite impressive to get all blues.. that means they had to breed splash to black right.. maybe part of the reason for discrepancy in pattern?? But overall, bib leakage IS something I have culled for in chicken brood stock.

What I'm basically saying is looks like a quality issue more than a breed issue.. to the best of my knowledge.. which is continuing to grow even through this post as I am here to learn also.

 

[corriemartin]

So all the pictures I see on the internet are Swedish Blues that meet the standard of perfection, and the rest....well, they're more like these. I'm actually not even sure that this is the breed that we're going to keep. These are our "starter ducks". I'm amazed that we haven't lost a single one, as they're out during the day. But they travel all together, unlike the chickens, and there IS a big dog out on patrol.