runner duck rainbow - color breeding project

[catsforever_99]

Hey everybody,
I´m from germany so please excuse mistakes.
Im absolutely into runner duck color genetics and want to breed every single color over the next few years.
unfortunaly in germany there are not many cool "certified colors" in the runner duck breeding standarts.
We have mallard (wildtype), trout (light phase mallard), something harlequin/snowy ("silber wildfarbig"), black, blue, brown, white, apricot trout/saxony ("blau-gelb"), brown trout ("erbsgelb") and brown-mallard runner/pied.

no dusky, no beautiful combinations of blue and brown and nearly no white markings allowed.

so, very boring and i want to change that, at least in my own yard.

I´ve got my hands on some treasures by browsing lokal markets and our online-fleamarket, because the colors (or at least the basics to mix them) are there but nobody calls them the right name or knows what they have...

My little flock contains (at the moment everybody born 2024):
ducks
Waltraud, mallard
Anne, brown mallard
Josefine, trout
Erbse, white
Mariechen, black pied
Heidi, Black bibbed
Rauch, blue bibbed
Tilia, lavender bibbed
Hosta, light blue dusky

drakes
Fraxinus, trout (?) calico & black pied
Sam, blue trout
Salix, apricot trout
nameless 1, brown dusky
nameless 2, light blue dusky

My breeding plans for 2025 are:
Group 1:
Fraxinus, trout (?) calico & black pied
+ waltraud, mallard
+ josefine, trout
Goal: is fraxinus homozygous for pied? is he mallard or trout or black?

Group 2:
Sam, blue trout
+ Erbse, white
+ Mariechen, black pied
Goal: which colors is erbse (under the white layer)? and single-blue ducklings

Group 3:
Salix, apricot trout/saxony
+ Rauch, blue bibbed
+ Heidi, black bibbed
Goal: single-blue and double-blue ducklings

Group 4 first round:
nameless 1, brown dusky
+ Anne, brown mallard
+ Tilia, lavender bibbed
Goal: brown and lavender ducklings of both sexes, some bibbed

Group 5 temporary:
nameless 2, light blue dusky
+ Hosta, light blue dusky
Goal: we get light dusky, light blue dusky and apricot dusky ducklings, keep the apricot ones
this drake will be rehomed at the beginning of May, he is already spoken for.
then the duck will remain

so we get
Group 4, second round with additional duck:
+ Hosta, light blue dusky
additional duckling options: Female dusky-lavender and brown-dusky ducklings, (males will not be brown, just dusky & blue dusky)

so hopefully by the end of 2025 additional colors in my runnerduck rainbow:
apricot dusky
brown dusky
lavender dusky
brown bibbed
blue
light blue
and some nice pied on various colors

If you like, i will take you along with me,
you will get tons of duck and duckling photos,
breeding coop construction photos (pinterest made me want little colorful swedish houses with white trim, i´m sorry),
the nerdy stuff (color prediction charts, gender guessing game,...)

how do I follow along?

 

[notallducksinmypond]

yeah... actually we did not get all we wanted... rough year on myself and the ducks....
lost my blue dusky duck, calico drake and apricot trout drake in the spring to some kind of predator (they vanished while i was at vacation) and my trout duck about two months ago to a leg injury...

my incubators did me dirty, i had lots of problems to figure out...

Positive point: learned that three of my ducks (as runners are spoken to be bad at hatching their own) went broody naturally: Rauch (hatched 6 out of 6), Josefine & waltraud (broody end of august, so no eggs anymore for them). rauch and josefine surprised me, waltraud is from a very broody line.

i did get some nice colors of ducklings:
last eggs of the blue dusky girl hosta gave me another blue dusky girl: Pepper
Mokka (brown dusky) and tilia (lavender bibbed) produced a nice solid lavender boy for me: Anise
Mokka (brown dusky) and Josefine (trout) got me two identical brown trout girls : Curry (kept) and Curcuma(rehomed)
Mokka (brown dusky) and Rauch (blue bibbed) made a beautiful brown bibbed girl: Cinnamon
somebody, and i genuinely do not know who (maaaaaybe because of the size now also tilia, maybe in combination with emmerich???) made me a (very little) dark dusky girly: Hysterie

I bought some hatching eggs and got an apricot trout girl: Quince
and a black girl with a little bib: Fig

in August i got my hands on a new colorful boy: Harlekin, because at this point most of my ducks are solid colored.
I hope he has some blue or brown (very little colored feathers to evaluate that properly) and is homozygous pied.

Some of the little girls are already laying eggs, so i hope for a strong 2026.

_______________________________
colors at the moment:
ducks
Waltraud, mallard, 2024
Anne, brown mallard, 2024
Erbse, white, 2024
Rauch, blue bibbed, 2024
Tilia, lavender bibbed, 2024
Curry, brown trout, 2025
Cinnamon, brown bibbed, 2025
Pepper, light blue dusky, 2025
Fig, black +small bib, 2025
Quince, apricot trout, 2025
hysterie, dark dusky, 2025

drakes
Sam, blue trout, 2024
Mokka, brown dusky, 2024
Emmerich, light blue dusky, 2024 (borrowed from a friend)
Anise, solid lavender, 2025
Harlekin, tricolor pied, 2025

 

[Miss Lydia]

yeah... actually we did not get all we wanted... rough year on myself and the ducks....
lost my blue dusky duck, calico drake and apricot trout drake in the spring to some kind of predator (they vanished while i was at vacation) and my trout duck about two months ago to a leg injury...

my incubators did me dirty, i had lots of problems to figure out...

Positive point: learned that three of my ducks (as runners are spoken to be bad at hatching their own) went broody naturally: Rauch (hatched 6 out of 6), Josefine & waltraud (broody end of august, so no eggs anymore for them). rauch and josefine surprised me, waltraud is from a very broody line.

i did get some nice colors of ducklings:
last eggs of the blue dusky girl hosta gave me another blue dusky girl: Pepper
Mokka (brown dusky) and tilia (lavender bibbed) produced a nice solid lavender boy for me: Anise
Mokka (brown dusky) and Josefine (trout) got me two identical brown trout girls : Curry (kept) and Curcuma(rehomed)
Mokka (brown dusky) and Rauch (blue bibbed) made a beautiful brown bibbed girl: Cinnamon
somebody, and i genuinely do not know who (maaaaaybe because of the size now also tilia, maybe in combination with emmerich???) made me a (very little) dark dusky girly: Hysterie

I bought some hatching eggs and got an apricot trout girl: Quince
and a black girl with a little bib: Fig

in August i got my hands on a new colorful boy: Harlekin, because at this point most of my ducks are solid colored.
I hope he has some blue or brown (very little colored feathers to evaluate that properly) and is homozygous pied.

Some of the little girls are already laying eggs, so i hope for a strong 2026.

_______________________________
colors at the moment:
ducks
Waltraud, mallard, 2024
Anne, brown mallard, 2024
Erbse, white, 2024
Rauch, blue bibbed, 2024
Tilia, lavender bibbed, 2024
Curry, brown trout, 2025
Cinnamon, brown bibbed, 2025
Pepper, light blue dusky, 2025
Fig, black +small bib, 2025
Quince, apricot trout, 2025
hysterie, dark dusky, 2025

drakes
Sam, blue trout, 2024
Mokka, brown dusky, 2024
Emmerich, light blue dusky, 2024 (borrowed from a friend)
Anise, solid lavender, 2025
Harlekin, tricolor pied, 2025

How about a bunch of pictures?

 

[notallducksinmypond]

How about a bunch of pictures?

they will come... the ones originally added to this post did not show up... i think its a technical or internet problem on my part... sorry