Chocolate ducks
A picture post of these unique ducks
I had carefully planned some duck hatches, hoping for crested ducks (results here and here) and had a surprise color hatch this spring: Chocolate! There wasn’t a calculated result that made this possible, so I kept this duckling to see what color and if male/female (Chocolate is an important gene in sex-linked ducklings).
Jupiter was a nice uniform brown color, even his bill and feet. Because I had used Buff ducks in my original breeding, I knew I had Blue genes in my flock. Brown was definitely unexpected, but I figured it might have come from my Saxony drakes (I no longer have them, they went to a young man wanting some rare breeds for his flock, including Saxony ducks and Yokohama chickens!).
By this time, I began to notice his feet being more orange and a yellowish/green tinge to his bill. By 8 weeks old I was able to voice sex him as a drake.
That was in April and in June one of my ducks hatched another chocolate duck! She is not fully feathered yet, but has been very loud and opinionated since about 5 weeks old, so I knew Cadbury was a female.
Her feet stayed a brownish/tan instead of orange and her bill remains a solid brown.
I’m excited to see what these unique additions bring to my flock!
Footnotes/Links:
The duck color calculator - I’m not responsible for lost hours or rabbit holes! I love to play with this calculator and dream of possible duck colors.
But wait, aren’t these ducks mixed breed?! No, here’s why
Bonus information: If you think these look like Campbell ducks, genetically they are very similar or identical for calculating results. Breeding chocolates together (or Campbells) result in more chocolates or Campbells, not sex-linked. Campbell ducks also have two “strains”, the popular and well-known Khaki and the Dark Campbell. The show standard for Campbells is for a Light weight duck good for laying eggs. The Dark Campbells are not show standard in the US. Campbells were developed from egg-laying breeds such as the Runner duck.
Because I’ve limited the genes and body types I use in my projects (no Runners), these should be Medium weight ducks and lay the same amount of eggs as my other Crested ducks (even though these do not have a crest, there could still be crested genes in there for future generations).
A friend of mine texted me one day with a duckling she found at the feed store and did I want it?
I didn’t think about it too much because, of course! Since this duckling coincided with my Planet/Stars hatch batch, I named it Sirius.
He’s a handsome addition to my flock and even though a little bit smaller than my Medium sized ducks, he’s a scrappy guy. He will also give me sex-linked ducklings with a non-Chocolate female.