Welsh Harlequin Ducklings....updated!!!

[duck&chickencrazy]

OK i bought 6 welsh harlequins when they were about a week old and they are now about 5-6 weeks old...but i dont know if they are male or female...4 of them are starting to turn a buff color and the other two are yellow but their whole rump is black...i dont know which are the males and which are the females...can someone help help me figure this out

 

[CityChicker]

Where did you get them from? That will help because some breeders seem to have the sex-linked bill color in their flocks and others don't. Pictures would help tremendously as well. By 6 weeks old, my WH were really starting to show their mature bill color, but a few were still borderline (they start one color at hatch and begin to change, but several weeks during the change, they all looked similar). All of my drakes though at that age had clearly solid dark heads and I had both Gold and Silver. Their juvenile plumage was pretty distinctly male or female, unlike some other breeds where it is harder to tell. Of course, it could have just been that I lucked on with my individual birds because plumage seems to vary a lot.

 

[kswaterfowl]

Welsh Harlequins are true auto sexing birds by bill color as dayolds, we've had them for 10 years now with our originals coming from Holderreads, and have always found every duckling to be sexed as dayolds. We have pictures on our website. www.kswaterfowl.blogspot.com I think it shows ducklings on there. Dayold males dark bills and dayold females have yellow bills (the reverse of what they have when they are adults.)

There are a lot of hatchery birds out there, touted to be WH's but sadly many of these birds are crossbred mutts that often carry snowy and pied genes. Its very frustrating, that the hatcheries try to push these wonderful new breeds. But with no discernment for their breeder birds being pure, and passing along birds that don't fit the standard descriptions. (I see you are in indiana. We are expecting 20 more ducklings from Holderreads next month. Some of our breeder birds are getting older, and we worried that Holderreads was going to do away with their flocks of them, so we ordered them while we had the chance.)
Jason

 

[Wifezilla]

WHAT???

Don't say that! Holderread's has such good quality Welshies!

 

[duck&chickencrazy]

ok well i feel dumb but i was looking at these ducklings a while ago and i realized that the ones that are turning a buff color are runners...i dont know why i didnt realize until just now but they are fawn and white runners....i feel dumb becuse they are even standing very upright like runners but i didnt even think they could be runners so it didnt even cross my mind...i am kinda ticked because the bin that i got the ducklings out of did not say runners...but its ok because i did end up getting 2 welsh harlequins and one is male and one is female...i think anyways because one has a dark bill and one has a yellowish bill...ok well i will post pics of them eventually lol...