Domestic Teal - the new little wonders of the world

[wolfwhyte]

Call duck on the right showing how small these domestic ducks are.
Snowy, Pastel, Black and Blue fawn from the top down.

Pastel hen

spotted

 

[DeckDuck]

Am I understanding correctly -these are domesticated Teals? Like Cinnamon or Green Winged? Wow, I didn't know there was such a thing. They look so tiny. Could you elaborate a bit?

 

[Frank Phinster]

The colouring of the spotted drake in the last two pictures reminds me of a mallard drake. The others are at least very similar to domestic mallards in colouring.

Pretty birds, I must say.

How did you (or the breeder you got them from) achieve this? Hybridization of random colour mutation?

 

[wolfwhyte]

I took this information from the website. I don't think I can give the address of the domestic teal website becasue eggs are offered on it.

History of Domestic Teal
​

I started working with Domestic teal in 1990. I was working for S. Dillon Ripley in Litchfield, CT. He had numerous types of waterfowl that were all kept together. Every year there were hybrids among the species. Mallard hybrids were common. Most are sterile, but I had kept a few of the teal hybrids to see if some were not. Some produced fertile eggs, and most were a mixture of patterns and not very pretty except when a domestic color pattern appeared. Them the results were very impressive. The Australian Spotted was the most common appearing color pattern. You hear of the Australian Spotted ducks appearing several times over the last century, so it is my belief, this has happened, at least, several times before.

It was not until around 2000 that I thought of trying something new. I crossed call ducks with teal. I them crossed the young ones together. I developed some very amazing ducks, but unlike the ones I had produced before, they laid few eggs and were not very hardy. Call ducks, by genetics, have many health problems. The small ones are notoriously hard to reproduce. Even though, I produced them in several color patterns and sizes, they were not hardy and did not reproduce well.

Missing the ones I had before, I went back to using mallards, and I tried again in 2006. I produced many hybrids the first year. The first hybrids are usually pretty large, but when I bred them together the following year. The sizes ranged from large mallard size to really small teal size ducks. I would only keep the smallest and most colorful drakes to breed from the following year, and the body size of my flock of little ducks just keep getting smaller. Unfortunately, I would have to repeat the process over again every time I want to introduce another color.

Today I have a flock of duck that carry a lot of color genes. Some are expressed, and some are not, so the possibilities are great when eggs are hatched of getting many different colors. Many colors are unique to the domestic teal because of some remaining teal genes. For example, there is a zoomorphic trait where drakes are duck feathered like in the North American Black duck; the drakes look like the ducks. For example, pastel drakes are solid buff like pastel ducks. The trait is co-dominant.

I am working to produce them in several more colors including white, pied and buff.

However, I am the most excited about working on producing domestic teal with the Indian Runner stance. Mini Pins about a foot high. It will be a couple of years, or more, before I will have some for sale

 

[wolfwhyte]

Cinnamon and Green-winged teal are kept in captivity, but they are considered wild type ducks. These were developed from domestic ducks and wild type teal, but are largely considered domestic ducks which are the size of teals. They breed well, lay large eggs and come in an increasing variety of colors.

 

[DeckDuck]

Wow, hybrid Runner-Teals! That sounds very cool. Thanks for the info.

 

[bellah1]

How much do they weigh?

 

[wolfwhyte]

Good question. I will have to weigh them, but first I need to get a scale small enough.

 

[wolfwhyte]

I love the tiny teal, but I do have to say the mini Indian runners are my favorite.

 

[wolfwhyte]

Another picture.

Blue Spotted drake with a pastel hen. This is one of the smallest drakes I have. Super tiny, and will produce a lot of silver sprtteds with this cross. Very small sucks that lay amazingly large eggs. Fertility is running about 98%. They just started laying where as last when there wasn't a winter, they started laying in February.