Sex linked ducks?

[Floof]

So my ducks are just starting to feel romantic towards one another and it has me wondering which ones I could put together to create sex linked ducklings. I have Silver Appleyards, Saxony, Golden Cascades, Welsh Harlequins (both silver and gold phases), and Pekins. I have male and females of all the above breeds. I think I can create sex links by pairing my saxony or golden cascade drakes with my silver appleyards or silver welsh harlequins hens. I would just like to be sure! Do these pairings work for sex links and what would they look like?

 

[TomCahalan]

You need to mate a chocolatey drake with a non-chocolatey duck. The male ducklings will be non-chocolatey, whereas the female ducklings will, so as you see, the color switches in the F1 generation.

If you bought your golden cascades from a hatchery, then they will be sex-linked, which means that they can't be used to create sex-linked offspring.

Pekins can be any color "under" their white, but usually they have the genetics to be like a mallard or black-bibbed. This would put them as non-chocolatey, but we can't be certain.

Silver Appleyards, Saxony, and Welsh Harlequins (silver) are all non chocolatey.

Welsh Harlequins (golden) are chocolatey.

So if you want to create sex-linked ducklings, you should use a Welsh Harlequin (golden) drake, and Silver Appleyard, Saxony, and Welsh Harlequin (silver) ducks. You could probably throw in your pekin ducks too, but you wouldn't be 100% certain.

 

[Floof]

You need to mate a chocolatey drake with a non-chocolatey duck. The male ducklings will be non-chocolatey, whereas the female ducklings will, so as you see, the color switches in the F1 generation.

If you bought your golden cascades from a hatchery, then they will be sex-linked, which means that they can't be used to create sex-linked offspring.

Pekins can be any color "under" their white, but usually they have the genetics to be like a mallard or black-bibbed. This would put them as non-chocolatey, but we can't be certain.

Silver Appleyards, Saxony, and Welsh Harlequins (silver) are all non chocolatey.

Welsh Harlequins (golden) are chocolatey.

So if you want to create sex-linked ducklings, you should use a Welsh Harlequin (golden) drake, and Silver Appleyard, Saxony, and Welsh Harlequin (silver) ducks. You could probably throw in your pekin ducks too, but you wouldn't be 100% certain.

Thank you! I got all my ducks except the pekins from Holderreads so the cascades should be pure. I thought the saxony were chocolate with a dilution gene

 

[TomCahalan]

Thank you! I got all my ducks except the pekins from Holderreads so the cascades should be pure. I thought the saxony were chocolate with a dilution gene

Saxony are light phase (like appleyards) and have two blue dilution alleles. No chocolate.

 

[Floof]

Saxony are light phase (like appleyards) and have two blue dilution alleles. No chocolate.

Thank you for clearing it up! If I wanted to test to see what was under my pekins white, do you think mating the pekin females to the golden cascade male would work? The females would be brown and the males might be black bibbed (for example)? I would have to grow then out to be sure of the accuracy but if the pekins aren't chocolate underneath the white then they would work for sex linkage too?

 

[TomCahalan]

Golden Cascade is a rare breed, but from what I see online, your drake should be heterozygous for the chocolate allele, meaning that you can't use him to make sex-linked ducklings. You can't have two sex-linked generations in a row.

Let me make it clearer with breeds that I am more familiar with. Let's say that you have a khaki campbell drake (homozygous for chocolate) and you mate him with a black runner duck. The drake will give one chocolate allele to each of his sons and daughters. The duck will give a non-chocolate allele to her sons, and neither to her daughters. Since the male ducklings have one chocolate and one non-chocolate allele, they are not chocolate (because chocolate is recessive), they will be black like their mother. Since the female ducklings have one chocolate and nothing else, they are chocolate.

Now we take one of the male ducklings and use him as a drake in the next generation. This black drake carries chocolate, but since he is heterozygous we can't be sure what he is passing to his offspring. He mates with a black runner. To his sons and daughters he passes chocolate or non-chocolate. The black runner duck passes non-chocolate to her sons and nothing to her daughters.

The result is that 50% of the offspring are black drakes, 25% are black ducks, and 25% are chocolate ducks. I guess that you could consider that sex-linked, but if you cull all of the black ducklings then you only get half as many females as you would by doing it the proper way.

If you want to be able to use your pekins to make sex-linked ducks you need to figure out where they stand on the chocolate gene. You can use any drakes that are homozygous for chocolate (unlikely to find any I think) and any ducks that aren't chocolate.

To test your pekin ducks, mate them to your golden harlequin drake. This is very likely to produced sex-linked ducklings which you could confirm when they start quacking.

To test your pekin drakes, mate them with your appleyards. Any brown (instead of black) on the ducklings and you have a drake that can produce sex-linked ducklings. This is very unlikely, and I wouldn't bother trying.

 

[TomCahalan]

Also you can use this calculator to calculate complex scenarios quickly:

http://kippenjungle.nl/kruisingEend.html

 

[Floof]

Also you can use this calculator to calculate complex scenarios quickly:

http://kippenjungle.nl/kruisingEend.html

Is there a way to set that website to english?

 

[TomCahalan]

It shows all three languages simultaneously. For example, since I know only English, I select using the box next to "Choose Color". If I knew Dutch I would select using the box next to "Kies kleur". Just play around with it, and you will soon see that you don't need to know other languages at all.

 

[Floof]

It shows all three languages simultaneously. For example, since I know only English, I select using the box next to "Choose Color". If I knew Dutch I would select using the box next to "Kies kleur". Just play around with it, and you will soon see that you don't need to know other languages at all.

Oh now I get it! Thank you!