HeritageGoose13
Songster
- Apr 24, 2015
- 1,201
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Earlier this year, I hatched out two clutches of Swedish/Pekin cross ducklings. Most came out marked almost exactly like a Swedish, but the black ones have some faint mallard-like markings on their faces, like yours. To my uneducated eye, these ducks seem to have a body type like the Swedish, but slightly larger than their Swedish mothers. The black offspring also have faint markings on their wings, like just a bit of frosting around the edges of some feathers, which I think I see on the wing of the duck in the foreground in your most recent photo. I have not noticed anything like this on the blue babies that hatched. I'm guessing your ducks are not pure Swedish.
Also, do you know how old these ducks are? They look a little raggedy to me, like my year-old ducks did just before their molt. My blue female's feathers became very rusty looking just before her molt - I remember thinking she looked like a chocolate. Her feathers were in poor condition, and looked very much like your "chocolate" does in the photo. She has since re-grown her feathers and is her original steel blue with no hint of the chocolate color. If your ducks are old enough to molt this year, I wonder if the chocolate color might not be permanent.
* Editing to add a photo. This is one of the ducklings from the first hatch, from my Pekin drake and a black Swedish duck. You can see the frosting on his wing. All of the ducklings from this cross do have exaggerated white wing tips, which you can also see a bit of in this photo. I have attributed this to the Pekin parentage (in case you're not familiar with the breed, Pekins are pure white), and assume that it wouldn't appear in crosses with other breeds, but I don't know.
Very interesting.
I will say the "Frosting" does not mean anything. Even pure Swedish will have white feathers on their wings.
