Help Understand Breed vs Color

[Jenlovesducks]

Hi There-
We had one of our ducks successfully brood & hatch 7 ducklings, started hatching on Mother’s Day. The ducklings are now about 6 weeks old and I’m trying to understand how my babies look nothing like any of the possible parents.
Here’s what I started with: Ducks- 3 white pekins, 2 Rouens, 2 gray & white runners. Drakes- one KC, one Pekin.
Ducklings are two Rouen, one Rouen/khaki looking, 2 black with white bibs(Swedish?), 2 dark gray with white bibs (??)

I’m attaching pics from hatching until today.

#homehatchedducks #duckcolors #duckgenetics

 

[Debbie292d]

Oops, no pictures!

 

[cheezenkwackers]

I am happy to try to explain it.

The black ducklings are either half Pekin or half gray (blue) runner.

The gene that causes ducks to be white is one which prevents any color from being added to the feathers. But, they still carry all the other color genes, often black with a bib. White is a recessive trait so a duckling will only be white if both mom and dad carry it.

The gray (blue) ducklings and the black ducklings could also just be half gray (blue) runner with either drake. Blue ducks have two different genes, at least one dominant black and only one blue (the other being not blue). As a result, they can have black or blue babies. If their baby gets one blue from them, the baby is blue. If it gets the “not blue” you get black.

The Khaki drake is most likely the father of the babies which look like Rouen or a Rouen mix (called mallard or wild-type) and most likely, the Rouen females are their mothers. “Most likely” because again you don’t know for sure what else the Pekins have under their white. If so, this would be a sex-linked cross, so the one you called a Rouen, Khaki cross (chocolate or brown mallard) is a female and the other two are male.

I hope this makes sense. Here is a great article from @Pyxis explaining it: https://www.backyardchickens.com/articles/mallard-derived-duck-color-genetics-basics.74277/