Questions about call duck eggs

[AnnaLease]

I got my call ducks at the beginning of June. I have two drakes (a black bibbed and a blue bibbed) and two hens (a white and a snowy). When will they lay eggs? How often do they lay an egg? When will they be fertile? If I hatched my owned ducklings would I get any other colors than the four colors I have? (I'm thinking, like, cats- if the parents are both tabbies, you can still get kittens that are black, gold, calico, etc....) Or do I need two parent ducks of the same color to make properly colored babies?

 

[AnnaLease]

Why won't anybody answer my questions?!?

 

[CelticOaksFarm]

Call ducks have a breeding season, so you are looking at next year before you see any eggs. You will have to check/test fertility at that time to see if your drakes are getting the job done.

Answering the color of the off spring is harder unless you know the background the ducks you have now. Yes you need white hen and white drake to get pure white ducklings. Otherwise they are mixed colors and mixed background.

 

[Oregon Blues]

Wow. Only 2 hours and you get peevish. I guess the staff librarian was on her coffee break.

 

[AnnaLease]

OK, thanks. And sorry I was impatient. I have asked questions before that never got answered, so I decided to bump this one up before it went any further down the page.

 

[AnnaLease]

Oh, one more thing- how do you test?

 

[cat1994]

The only way I know of how to test for fertility it to candle the eggs during incubation, maybe someone will know another way

 

[duckluck]

The white can mask a lot of other color genetics, so you could be looking at a whole lot of other colors when breeding it to other colors. I have also known of sports popping up between pairs of whites rarely.

 

[AnnaLease]

OK, so maybe next year, we'll just eat the eggs and get some more duckling from somebody else. I would like pastels, butterscotches.....

 

[CelticOaksFarm]

These are pictures of fertile eggs

They show visible bulls eyes when fertilized.