Question about duck genetics

[amyburemt]

Could someone give me a basic rundown on duck genetics? I have a pekin male and a cayuga female that have created a nest. when/if the babies hatch, do I need to sell them to decrease the probability of a parent mating with an offspring?
Thank you.

 

[quackingdom]

I am not an expert on duck genetics, but I do want to say that inbreeding should definitely be avoided. I have accidentally hatched ducklings whose parents were siblings, and many of the inbred ducklings did not grow properly. They were slow to grow, and some of them never reached their normal size. And many of them were outright stupid. They didn't understand how to find the door in the morning—you had to pick them up and take them out.
So I definitely recommend selling those offspring!

 

[lomine]

Line breeding (father to daughter/mother to son) is (generally) fine in birds. This is how some new colors and breeds are created. For example, the Welsh Harlequin breed was created from just two light colored Khaki Campbell that turned up in one person's flock.

Sibling to sibling is okay but too much over more generations can lead to problems. You should be fine if you keep some the the offspring. You'll just want to be careful not to have too many drakes.

 

[quackingdom]

Line breeding (father to daughter/mother to son) is (generally) fine in birds. This is how some new colors and breeds are created. For example, the Welsh Harlequin breed was created from just two light colored Khaki Campbell that turned up in one person's flock.

Sibling to sibling is okay but too much over more generations can lead to problems. You should be fine if you keep some the the offspring. You'll just want to be careful not to have too many drakes.

This has never made sense to me. I have accidentally bred mother to son as well as sibling to sibling, and gotten exactly the same bad results. How is sibling to sibling worse than mother to son?

 

[lomine]

I'm not an expert by any means but my guess would be you have some sort of genetic issues in your ducks. Might be a recessive trait. Breeding two animals that both carry a recessive trait gives you a 25% chance their offspring will get that trait from each and it will present physically. Or could be they came from a line that hasn't been breed in a responsible manner.

I do know that birds are different than mammals when it comes to be negatively affected by inbreeding. It can usually be done for many generations if the right birds are picked for breeding and the 'wrong' ones are culled.

 

[quackingdom]

I was thinking that might be true, especially since we did not get our ducks from a breeder or hatchery (there are none around), so some of them could easily be from a bad line. (We did introduce new, unrelated ducks and have had no problems since.) But anyone's ducks could have hidden genetic issues, even if they were from a reputable breeder. I don't think there are any ducks or any other creatures in this world without defects of some kind. Unless you're trying to improve the breed or breeding for showing, I think it's safer, in general, to breed unrelated ducks.

 

[ANightPerson]

Is breeding half-siblings ok? They all took strongly after different parents, and my drake is my hens' half brother. I'm not too worried about it, but will this be alright?

 

[lomine]

You won't really know until you try. You'll probably be fine though.