whos the daddy to my duckings!?

[thedoors5to1]

im wondering who the father is to my ducklings, i am guessing it is my grey runner. i have three girls, fawn and white, blue and black. im pretty positive cricket my fawn and white is the mother, they bear her white markings. and i have two boys, a grey and a chocolate!
the five ducklings are each a little different, a few a little darker, but all have white body patches, tan/grey patches and some dark brown feathers here and there.

here are my adult ducks:

here are the babies:

now as teenagers:

 

[Goat_Walker]

Im thinking your chocolate drake. All my ducklings that ever had a grey parent , at least 80% of the clutch had the eye stripes.

 

[FenDruadin]

Adorable!!! They are super, super cute. Look similar to what I get when I mix black drake with fawn/white hen, so I'm going to venture to guess chocolate father. Could be some of each though, you know? They are really adorable though--I love the mixed-up colors. Congrats on the gorgeous hatch.

 

[thedoors5to1]

thanks for your opinions guys. im really curious, i think two may be the chocolate drakes cause they are a little darker and they dont have the eye stripes, but the three others do have some what of the eye stripes, its so cute they have white little feathers and grey feathers coming in on thier faces. thanks curiosity cat and goat walker for your input!

 

[JJchiknshak]

This post was awesome! I have a chocolate drake, a black female, & a F &W female.

I've been wondering what the babies would look like. Now I know!

I'd definitely say Chocolate is the daddy. In fact I think he's the only one with a drake feather.

 

[JJchiknshak]

I hope you will post more pics here as they get older, I'd love to see what they look like as adults.

 

[CityChicker]

They are cuties!

Definitely the Chocolate drake was the daddy and the babies should be Cinnamon Penciled basically. They would have gotten one blue dilution and the Runner pattern from the Fawn and White mother, the brown dilution from both parents, and then the extended Black from the Chocolate drake. The color would be slightly off because of the mixing of the base colors, but basically Cinnamon Penciled.

 

[thedoors5to1]

thanks for the compliments citychicker and jjchiknshak.. heres some more photos, i am pretty positive now that piper my grey runner is the father, considering they have the eye stripes, all of them have it except one of my babies, here is a new group shot:

an old photo as babies:

heres three of the four with face stripes:

Ok....edited to add that photobucket sucks, i uploaded 20 photos and only one works!!!!

so frustrating! i will figure it out later and post them then.... the darker faced duckling in front i beleive is my chocolate drakes, he is the only one without face stripes.. oh and Piper my grey runner in the photo up above is molting thats why you do not see his drake feathers.. beleive me hes a boy, but goes through elipse and diff color stages.. that make him look boy and girl

 

[bemba]

Beautiful ducks!!! The eye stripes are not from the grey (natural) gene, they are the pied gene markings, as you can see that they are irregular, and white, the pied gene causes parts of a coloured duck to turn white, so a fawn and white duck is a fawn pied. Or possibly could be the bibbed gene, which causes a white bib, white markings around the head and sometimes in the flight feathers. Being runners though, I would say more likely to be the runner pattern pied gene. So if dad was the grey, you should have gotten some ducklings that were either natural or natural pied. I LOVE pied ducks, I have just hatched out 7 pied ducklings.

 

[CityChicker]

I agree with Bemba on this. I don't think what you are seeing is eye stripes per se. There are a number of different genes that create the various white markings on extended black ducks, pretty much all of which can result in various amount of white on the head/face. Yes, you are seeing white that sort of looks like a stripe near the eyes, but I don't think you are seeing "eye-stripes" as in the eyes stripes of the wild type (m+).

If the father had been the Grey, I would expect to see that reflected in some areas of the colored plumage, especially since the sex-linked brown would not be seen. You would see birds that appeared to be Pied Blue Fawns if the Grey were the father.