SWEDISH Duck Thread!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[craftymama86]

Quote:
Haha, I didn't think about coffee. I did think though that you get really excited about ducks, lol.

 

[CrazyCatNChickenLady]

Here's mine. Blue duck and a black drake. What would get if I hatched her eggs come spring? I got them from Metzer Farms in June.

 

[craftymama86]

Beautiful!!! I love ducks/drakes that are green like that, they look like their made of velvet, hehe.

 

[DB_Tex]

Quote:
She actually looks more silver than blue in that pic. Here is what mezter's site says about breeding swedish for color:
The most interesting component of the Blue Swedish breed is the production of the blue color. Blue birds do not breed true. In other words, if you mate a Blue Swedish with another Blue Swedish, only 50% will hatch blue. You will also get 25% black with white chests (called Black Swedish) and 25% that are a very light grey color, often called Silver or Splashed White Swedish. To produce the blue color you must have heterozygote parents, meaning they have a black and a silver gene for feather color. In addition, the first two or three primary flight feathers are pure white in a Blue or Black Swedish duck. This, along with the correctly sized white patch on the chest, makes the Blue Swedish a difficult bird to perfect in terms of feather coloration.

So that we can produce 100% blue colored Blue Swedish, we have two breeder flocks. In one flock we have Black Swedish males and Silver females. In the other flock we have Silver males and Black Swedish females. All the progeny from these crosses will be the correct blue color. In June when we need breeders for next year, we switch the males so Black are on Black and Silver on Silver. We collect these eggs for about three weeks and hatch them for breeders. Then we switch the males and go back to producing the correctly colored Blue Swedish for the rest of the season. This is the reason we do not have Blue Swedish or Blue Runners available in July of each year.

I guess if she's genetically blue you'll get a grab bag of swede colors, but if she's genetically silver you will reliably get all blues with your black drake.
The bib on him looks great!

 

[CrazyCatNChickenLady]

Thanks. I was confusing myself! Needed someone to lay it all out for me! haha Also about her being silver if she came from Metzer then she should be blue then according the the 'formula', I've never looked at her and thought anything other then blue. I guess I haven't seen too many pics of the silvers. I'd LOVE to end up with some silver and splashes though I think they're the prettiest ducks!

Also on my drake.. the bib looks pretty good, then the black almost meets with mottling and there is another big white spot right below it! Its kinda like a figure eight bib! Lots of mottleing around the edges. That pic does make it look good though!

 

[Oregon Blues]

Crazy cat lady, indeed a blue and a black.

I would suspect about 50/50 blue or black if you breed them. Statistics are averages of large numbers, so your mileage might vary.

 

[DUCKGIRL89]

Ok! Sounds like im getting swedish ducks anyway! Still thinking about what colors to get though! Super excited!

UPDATE no im not,,,,, false alarm....

 

[70%cocoa]

A couple of weeks ago I had four more ducklings hatch - all blue, from a silver drake and black duck. Here they are at about 4 days old:

Duckling 1

Duckling 2 (added an extra photo)

Duckling 3

Duckling 4

Pretty happy with bibs and wing tips at this stage although a couple have a small white mark behind the eye - not too keen on that but will see how it develops. Based on vent sexing I'm pretty sure I have two boys (No's 3 and 4) and two girls (No.s 1 and 2).

Here they are with the three that hatched two weeks before them. The blue ones are about 2 weeks old here and the black ones and yellow one are about 4 weeks old. They are living together very happily. The yellow one will turn out white and will just be sold as a 'white pet duck'. Her mother is a blue Swedish so I now know the mother is carrying recessive white.

 

[Evelle]

BABYS!!! awwww i miss mine when they where that small

very cute looks like they will be very beautiful as adults

 

[70%cocoa]

Thanls, Evelle, I hope they turn out well

I'll put up some mroe pics of them in a couple of weeks so we can see how the bibs develop.