separation of ducks from group

[Eric Rosario]

the opposite of the pure breeds, all breeds are regular duck - no muscowy.

i'm trying to mix breeds to get different combinations, that's why i need to have the drakes (the same breed) from the group B to mate with the females. 2 drakes are the same breed (i bought two for safety if one should die or got any problems i still got the other one) and there is one female of the same breed as drakes, two females from different and one female from other breed so they are 2+4.
Based on different breeds of the females i should be able to recognize the duckling based on their colours and i have plans with the duckling to mix them for next year to get the varied results. this group has genetically higher value for me than the bigger group A.

the group A contains 3 drakes from which 2 drakes are one breed we kept them cause of safety if one should die or got other problem, the third drake is actually useless but he is nicely coloured so we are keeping him just for fun.
there are total 5 females in this group A and it should produce same several colours in the first line but not that interesting as the other group B.

actually if, as i have two drakes in group A of the specific breed but not the female from that breed that could be added to the group B, I was doing some counting and planing and if there is a female of the breed that these drakes are, i could keep only her with the group B and there would be no need to maintain the entire group A.

all of the ducks are still cute, and as there are now total of 14 ducks they are nearly all different and its not that easy to decide which to keep and which to remove. Last year when we had 16 pekin ducks it was random choice on drake and 3 females. now as the breeds are different i have to plan based on their genes. if my theories are correct first results should be visible this season when the ducklings hatch and the final result should be when the following generation matures so in Fall 2021.

i hope this might make sense, regardless i did not wrote specific breeds, right? i've done similiar breeding with my hamsters, and resulted in 34 colour and pattern combinations as breeding the same looking animals everytime is boring for me, but planing and calculating and be excited about the results is what I'm mostly interested in.

 

[jaykayhuff]

When I had to separate my gander from his Muscovy mama/ wife ( long story) I ended up putting a solid barrier up so he couldn’t see her on the other side of the fence. Out of sight out of mind eventually. Tarps, landscaping material etc will work. I was wanting him to bond with the female goose I had brought home.

Seems like it could be an interesting “long story” though...

 

[aart]

as we need to get eggs from the females to be fertilized by the desired drakes only.

Wondering of duck hens hold sperm like chicken hens do?
It can take up to 4 weeks for a chicken hen to clear sperm from other matings.

 

[Knighstar679]

Wondering of duck hens hold sperm like chicken hens do?
It can take up to 4 weeks for a chicken hen to clear sperm from other matings.

I remember reading somewhere it can take three weeks to a month.

 

[Eric Rosario]

yes i heard that it's like for 2 weeks but 3 weeks to be sure, we have seperated them now one the end of Feb, and there are no eggs, sometimes one per week, but i suppose in March there wont be many eggs so only from April and these eggs should be fertilized from the drakes in each group. Just my question and concern is if the drakes and females mates in the group B, i've seen mating even yesterday in group A.

 

[Miss Lydia]

Usually once I start seeing mating it’s a few weeks before eggs start coming.

 

[Eric Rosario]

Usually once I start seeing mating it’s a few weeks before eggs start coming.

we got some eggs, and they've mated already. what ever, we will need to collect several eggs before filling them to our incubator, last year our pekin females were broody but they did not hatched the ducklings, last time one of them was sitting on like 12 eggs but the eggs dissappeared and only 4 remain, not sure what happened. When we candled the eggs one was fertile so we put it in incubator but it did not hatch. But it was a good sign that they were broody as the incubation begun. not sure how other breeds should be broody too. if not the incbuator is ready.

 

[Eric Rosario]

hello again, I have first ducklings and I'm still not sure about the breeds of parents.

on left there are two drakes (brothers) i've bought them already as adults from a breeder as Orpington, from the gene calculator I've found out that there are 3 versions of Orpington
light, standard and dark, it depends on presence of the Blue gene.
I'm afraid I have the dark versions and the Blue gene is missing entirely from the drakes, none of the babies are blue or blue combination.

on the right (middle) there is a female, based on comparison to other breeds I identefied them as Silver appleyard but as they matured their beak changed to dark and the silver applyerad has orange beak. (drake has dark green head he is not present in our breed)
Per images found on internet welsh harlequin female is similiar to this breed just harlequin has less brown and are nearly white with some marks and black beak.
so i'm not sure about the breed, lady that sold them call them as peasant duck, so nothing that could help me.

this is a female from the same breed as the Orpington drakes are, she is lighter in colour so i'm not sure if she got any blue gene or not, she laid green shell eggs, but if she is laying only greens we got like 8 eggs, some are still in hatchery and we are expecting them soon. none of the green shelled eggs hatched so far.

and here are our first 14 ducklings. i'm still wondering on their genes and their adult colour. Unfortunately I forgot to mark the eggs from which group they were taken. another load of eggs are marked. One group should produce black and whit ducklings, Ancona or magpie, the black and white ducklings are alredy more black then white as their parents were, based on the gene calculator and information gathered homozygous runner patern is Magpie, heterozygous is Ancona.

Bigger black ducklings should be drakes and browns should be females, they are offspring from Orpington drake and black female. But two brownish are different tint, it's not the same.