question about crested ducks.

[mynameiserin]

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Thank you very much for the website and the support.
And I ordered a few but my one with the largest crest died when he was about 4 days old.
And I'm sorry about your cat knocking your incubator over, but cats will do what they please lol.
and I would love to see your pictures, I love looking at pictures ducks, I don't know why I could do it all day long though.

and no none of mine are white crested. I mostly got hatchery choice but I do know that I have 2 fawn and white runners, and 3 magpies (yeah all crested) and I think some will be mallards but I'm not sure.... all together I ordered 20 but 4 died so I have 16 all together. and that makes me feel even sillier about the whole thing because I was like "yeah let's order 20 crested babies" and then a little bit later I was like "oh no now I ordered 20 crested ducks who are going to have neurological problems"

The ones with large crests usually die early.
It sounds like you have an assortment of cresteds.

Mine dont have really big crests but one of the drakes does though.

no other ones had huge ones, but I have one or two that are double crested and another one that actually looks as if he is triple crested, but I don't know if that happens or if it's just a weird double crest.

 

[duckyfromoz]

The gene that causes the crest is incompletely dominant - that means that the ducklings bred from two crested gene carrying parents wont DEFINITELY inherit a gene from each parent and die before hatching. While you may have greatly reduced hatch rates when breeding from a flock that is all crested - some babies are still possible. Not all crested ducks have problems either. They are more prone to neurological problems- but most live completely normal lives. I have two crested Runners- but have only kept males with the crested genes- so I know that any ducklings will only ever get one dose of the crested genes. Have you considered the possibility of trying to swap some of your babies once grown? It may be hard to part with some after raising them, but it will increase the number of ducklings you will get each year if you were planning to breed them to sell the ducklings.

 

[mynameiserin]

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thank you for this... and my whole flock isn't all crested I do have a few older ducks that I got last year. And I don't breed my ducks to sell really if they decide to hatch babies awesome if not then that's okay too :] All of my ducks are simply pets. I just felt bad if I got them and they were all going to suffer or something like that.