The Quack Shack

[Magnolia Ducks]

This happened to me twice. It is a genetic defect that I believe comes about through line breeding.when I introduced some unrelated stock it stopped.

 

[Supercow]

This happened to me twice. It is a genetic defect that I believe comes about through line breeding.when I introduced some unrelated stock it stopped.

The sudden death, the stunted growth, the strange feathering, all of it?

 

[Magnolia Ducks]

The sudden death, the stunted growth, the strange feathering, all of it?

Yes all of it. Its like they got 3 weeks old and stopped. The one that lived the longest also eventually lost the ability to walk. I took the first one to an avian vet who the consulted with a national duck expert at one of the best vet schools in the country and this is answer I received. ill see if I can find her picture. And from hatch to about this size they appeared normal.

 

[Magnolia Ducks]

Sorry, I'm famous for blurry pictures and since she's alone its hard to see how small she was.

 

[Miss Lydia]

Today our little weird Welshie boy was found dead in the middle of the large duck house. There was no blood and no indication yesterday that this could happen.

He was 5 months old and very strange - he remained small, was never fully feathered (areas with down remained) and those feathers that he did have were kinda random in placement in size. He looked all the time as though he just escaped from a fox's mouth.

We told the egg seller about this after the first two months when it became obvious as we were worried about genetic defects. He insisted that it must be some kind of internal parasites inhibiting the duckling's growth. But then he did also insist that he sold us 2 boxes of Welshie eggs and not 1 box of Welshies and 1 box of Silver Appleyards which turned out to very obviously be the case.

We're sad about the little guy and concerned what this means going forward - do we try and hatch our own Welshies or will this bring even more strange and short-lived animals.

No good answers right now.

I'm so sorry for the loss of your little Welshie..RIP Little one.

I lost Runner female yesterday 6 yrs old RIP Pepper

 

[Canadian Wind]

This happened to me twice. It is a genetic defect that I believe comes about through line breeding.when I introduced some unrelated stock it stopped.

A lot of places never put in fresh blood/genetics. They just replace older or deceased birds with younger from the same flock. Whilst inbreeding in birds can be done for generations, there comes a point where some anomaly now becomes established in the whole flock to it's detriment.

I'm very sorry to hear about your little Welshie, @Supercow .

 

[Supercow]

Thanks for your feedback everybody. A genetic defect is what we suspected although the breeder was supposedly a particularly good one with decades of history and several awards. That's why we took the step of ordering eggs from another country in the first place.

This may not feel obvious to the folks in Canada and the US but Europe has such a number of different countries, languages and regulations that it can be hard to even find a good source, and then expensive to actually ship the eggs.

We do have one remaining really beautiful Welshie drake and two ladies. The seller says the eggs were from different groups but after having had the experience of mixed up breeds and genetic defects we don't really trust him. Maybe one hatching in the spring and we see what's what. Hopefully we don't get a set of poor little undeveloped ducklings