Swedish Ducks

[Feather Lady]

I am new to Swedish Ducks... we adopted a pair of one year olds on Saturday and now I'm trying to figure out everything I can about the breed. We already received an egg yesterday morning and this morning!

The male bobs his head up and down a lot, does this mean something?
Below are pictures, I assume they are Black Swedish? I can't seem to find pictures of black, do mine look correct for the breed?
Do they go Broody? My kids are hoping for babies.

Do you have any other words of wisdom?

Hanzel and Gretel

Side shot of Hanzel

Thank you!!

 

[70%cocoa]

The head bobbing is ducky flirting

Yes, they are both black. The look a little faded by the sun perhaps.

Hanzel looks to be quite nice, type-wise (meaning a good shape). His bib isn't so great, as it is blotchy and ideally it should not extend onto his lower chest and stomach and it should not go all the way up his neck to his chin. You are after a raindrop shap on the chest only, about the size of a large orange. They both have good leg colour and nice evenly coloured bills (not blotchy), which is also good. Hanzel has white flight feathers, which is good - ideally you want only the last 2 or 3 big feathers on the wings to be white but it is really hard to get this. I can't tell how many he has. Can't tell if Gretel has any, but it is a recessive gene so she may be carrying the gene for it even if she doesn't have any. Gretel has no real bib, but that doesn't mean that her offspring will not have good bibs. Gretel's head looks nice - reasonably rounded (i.e. not at all like a Runner) and her bill is not sloped down (which is good). The top of their bills is straight (also good).

I would breed from this pair to see what you get. I hope you really enjoy your Swedish, they are such nice ducks

 

[Feather Lady]

70%cocoa :

The head bobbing is ducky flirting

Yes, they are both black. The look a little faded by the sun perhaps.

Hanzel looks to be quite nice, type-wise (meaning a good shape). His bib isn't so great, as it is blotchy and ideally it should not extend onto his lower chest and stomach and it should not go all the way up his neck to his chin. You are after a raindrop shap on the chest only, about the size of a large orange. They both have good leg colour and nice evenly coloured bills (not blotchy), which is also good. Hanzel has white flight feathers, which is good - ideally you want only the last 2 or 3 big feathers on the wings to be white but it is really hard to get this. I can't tell how many he has. Can't tell if Gretel has any, but it is a recessive gene so she may be carrying the gene for it even if she doesn't have any. Gretel has no real bib, but that doesn't mean that her offspring will not have good bibs. Gretel's head looks nice - reasonably rounded (i.e. not at all like a Runner) and her bill is not sloped down (which is good). The top of their bills is straight (also good).

I would breed from this pair to see what you get. I hope you really enjoy your Swedish, they are such nice ducks

Thank you for all the great information! I'll have to see how many white flight feathers Hanzel has, Gretel doesn't have any white except for the little in the front. I'm hoping Gretel will sit on her eggs, she laid another one this morning. They seem to be nice ducks already. I was worried about getting them at a year old but they are very friendly to my kids and they eat out of their hands.

Do you have a picture of yours?​

 

[Kelsey2017]

They are very nice! I too just adopted a trio of Swedish ducks this spring. They were about 8 months old at the time and within two weeks of settling in here the two ducks proceeded to go broody and then about a month later- pop! Little adorable ducklings! I hope it goes as well for you! Good luck and enjoy those ducks!

 

[70%cocoa]

Quote:
I'll put up some pics tonight (Australian time

).

 

[Feather Lady]

Quote:
How did you tell they were going broody? Should I leave the eggs there and see if she sits on them, or would she already be sitting on them if she wanted to?

 

[70%cocoa]

Here are some pics of my Swedish - I have 6 at the moment (two trios) and also two cross-bred ducks (chocolate ducks).

Here's my silver drake, Magellan. He has great type but no white flights and a very splotchy bib. He is probably my best, type-wise. He also has no white at all on his face or under his chin (which is rare, to have no white under the chin) so I am hoping he passes that on. He is a very cuddly-looking duck, be he doesn't like cuddles so I try to resist....

Here is my blue duck, Shackleton - my only blue one. She is also a good type and size. Bib is very neat but could be bigger. Has a bit of white under the chin (fault but hard to get rid of). No white flight feathers but should be carrying the gene. She has some black feathers but you pretty much always get that. A judge told me to pull them out before showing her.

The black Swedish in the pond here is LaPerouse. She is probably my best, markings-wise, except for a bit much white on her face. The black duck standing outside the pond is Tasman, She has some black intruding into her bib and a bit of white on the face too. Obviously the white on the face is something I am keen to work on removing. The blue duck you already met. The dark duck in the pond is Torres, a chocolate cross-bred. She is the boss duck

The black one on the left is another drake, Marco Polo. He has a good bib but a bit of white under the chin and he is also a little long in the body. He is a nice big boy. His flights have not fully grown back after moulting in this pic (it was taken a few months ago). The pale duck standing next to him is Freycinet - she is splash or silver in colour. Beautiful type (maybe a tad small). Can't tell anything about her bib or flight feathers though as she is almost white all over! You can see LaPerouse peeping through the grass on the right, and one of my chickens, Wills (an Australian Langshan) trying to make an escape in the middle of the pic.

Here is Marco, LaPerouse and Freycinet again, with Magellan and Shackleton and possibly Tasman and the other chocolate (Jansz) in the background.

I did not breed any of these ducks, they are my starting group. They are from four different lines, so I am starting out with a bit of genetic diversity. We will see what they produce in springtime! I am going to set eggs in August (late winter for us).

Hope you like them!

 

[Kelsey2017]

Quote:
How did you tell they were going broody? Should I leave the eggs there and see if she sits on them, or would she already be sitting on them if she wanted to?

Yep just leave the eggs there! I couldn't find any eggs for about a week and thought for some reason that they had stopped laying. When I started investigating further I stuck my head next to the hay pile and almost got bit on the nose! No doubt she had gone broody. The other duck tried to get the broody one to do all the work for the first week or so and kept adding an egg until she finally settled in too. It didn't work out so well though because the babies started hatching and the later laid ones got shuffled around too much and then not sat on properly. I had really wished I had an incubator because you could tell they were close to hatching and the moms rolled them out of the nest when they died. But on a better note, now I have a group of ducklings with two mamas and their loving daddy waddling around the yard- SO CUTE!

70%cocoa, you have really beautiful ducks! I was anxious to get some but knew if I had ordered and payed lots I would get into trouble! I already had gotten a new flock of layers, doubled my cornishX endeavor and convinced DBF to let me try turkeys, so.... I just happened to find my trio quote, "so cheap I couldn't pass them up, and they were just down the road, so it was like it was meant to be!" At which point they were already in the chicken yard swimming in my children's recently emptied turtle sandbox. They are not perfect examples but I will get there after awhile. DBF is Swedish so that helps!

 

[gofasterstripe]

Cocoa...Im

with your silver duck. I love pale ducks with dark beaks, I think they are sooo pretty.

 

[70%cocoa]

Thanks guys, I'm glad you like them!

Gofasterstripe - I love her colour too, pale with a blue bill. Mostly I call her 'Pretty Girl' even though it's not her name

I've got the day off work tomorrow so I can sit and watch them all day. Bliss!!