Welsh harlequin breeders, owners, or soon to be owners post here!

[DUCKGIRL89]

Well pet quality is just for eggs and stuff. And the show quality are for shows, thats all I know though, mine are just pet quality.

 

[kswaterfowl]

There is a standard for them in the newest addition of the American Poultry Association Standard of Perfection. We have been breeding them for a decade now and still love them! They are our main breed and although we have other breeds of ducks and chickens, they are the only ones that we keep a large number of. We depend on our show flock for our family's eating eggs, and they supply is with many many eggs when they are not molting. We were lucky enough to win Reserve Champion light duck at the 2006 Crossroads National with a drake that we bred, he is long gone now, but I am hoping to have a good showing at this years national with our Welsh Harlequins. We also maintain a breeding flock with both silver phase and gold phase birds, but are ever vigilant to keep good body color on our golds as well as our silvers.

 

[DUCKGIRL89]

If that is the drake in you avatar he is BEAUTIFUL!!!

 

[kswaterfowl]

That is a snowy mallard drake. Here are some Welsh Harlequin pictures.

The golds in the bottom picture are really faded, but they've since molted and are very dark again, like the ones in the top picture.

 

[desertskynm]

Please tell me these beauties came from Metzer... I am nervous now that I hear you all saying they are not good for quality WH...

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[kswaterfowl]

The very first stock we purchased was from Holderreads. The rest have been bred over the years carefully to their Standard. Metzer birds tend to be snowy patterned birds, often there are pied genes mixed in there causing an extra amount of white, the hens often have the wrong bill color, and vary in stance and type. That said, they can be good layers, but I've never been impressed with their stock. Also the way to tell they are snowy and not harlequin, a snowy bird will most often have the pattern on a white background, a harlequin bird will have the pattern over a creamy to honey background (I can best describe it as the color of raw milk rather over store-bought milk.)

picture property of Murray McMurray Hatchery Website

This is a fairly typical pair of what you see out of Metzer and both birds carry and express pied genes. If you note the white on the drake and ducks necks it is the first sign of pieds. They will also typically have white under the chin and if you open their wings, their flight feathers will be solid white while a Welsh Harlequin should have creamy-white flights with black/brown at the end of the flights, I will try to take a picture of one of our birds tomorrow. You will also notice the drakes bill is really light yellow green and the hens bill in the picture is completely the wrong color. We cull females for dark bills showing even a little bit of orange, so these would all be culled from our flock because of color long before they were completely mature because of color issues.

 

[aineheartsyou]

My two adult WH males are from Metzer's are they are not show quality. I will be selling them along with my extra holderread males later this fall.

 

[Tbird84]

I don't have any pics of my WHs yet, but my girls certainly don't look like the two above, although they are very snowy. They do have that pale honey/cream on the head into the neck. They got lighter as they molted. Mine came from Metzer's and are beautiful and very vigorous and healthy. Certainly not show birds, but perfect for what I bought them for. They are just under 6 mo and I'm waiting on those first eggs. I'll try to get pics of them tomorrow.

 

[DUCKGIRL89]

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Their six months and no eggs? Im worried that mine wont lay untill spring

 

[Tbird84]

well, technically, they won't be 6 months old until the 25th. The males have already been trying out their move on them and one of my Khaki Campbells was actually receptive. We'll see. Pretty much my whole barnyard decided to molt at the same time. Most everyone has come out of it now. So...hopefully eggs will be following.