AUSTRALIAN POULTRY FORUM™

i have a black east indie duck, i live in sydney and can't find a drake.

how hard would it be to breed more black or blue east indies, using mallards?
i have blue bibbed, blue fawn,white and natural coloured mallards.
i also have an almost all blue mallard drake, he has half a bib, its on his left side and is claret colour.
his right side is completely blue, a dark shade of blue...
thanks

Why don't you have a guess Swayne? Type aside, the answer (colour-wise) for this should be easy!!

are you thinking nearly all dark blue with half claret bib drake over the black duck ?

then back cross the best progeny with mother /father ,line breeding style?

would i end up with a percentage all black and some all blue?

if that did work how many generations before i have a stable bloodline that bred true?

From the outset it is possible for any of your Mallards to carry unwanted factors for your potential BEI project. The best you can do is to keep it as uncomplicated/clean as possible going on what you can "see" in them from the start.

Personally, I would keep away from using anything white, or with white spotting/markings, eg, white bibbs, flights etc. Your "nearly all dark blue with half claret bib drake" may be useful, but going by description given, am left wondering about true genetic make-up?

A "clean" Blue Fawn (M+//M+, Li+//Li+, Bl//bl+) would be my bird of choice going on available resources you have desribed! Here you have (or should have) a wild-type bird with one dose of the blue dilution mutation. If your BEI is pure for extended black (E//E), then all ducklings produced from such a mating will inherit one dose of the incompletely dominant gene for black (E//e+) & should in theory be very dark/black (approx 50%) or blue (approx 50% of ducklings produced will inherit the incompletely dominant blue dilution gene from the Blue Fawn Drake). Selecting one of the best Blue male progeny for colour/type & crossing back over your BEI duck should see you well on your way to producing some nice little black & blue birds!

Blues are not currently accepted in the Standard as I understand so won't be able to be shown (unless under AOV?), but the blacks will of course. How long before the "colour" is stable? In the true sense it never really is because breeding blue into them will leave potential for multiple colours to be bred, ie, Blue, Black, & splash, depending on the colour of stock birds mated? Initially, you could also produce "other than black/blue" birds if stock birds used are heterozygous or impure for the extended black gene (E//e+). I would think the goal would be to select the blackest (with irridescent green of course) of the blacks for future breeding as you go.

According to my info BEI are type-wise somewhere between the Calls & Mallards. If your BEI is of good size/type, you could be surprised just how quickly good type (& colour) in progeny can be attained.

Good Luck

thats the kind of information i was looking for..

the nearly all blue with claret bib drake came from a blue bibbed duck that carries the natural colour (i think), this blue bibbed duck mated with a blue fawn drake (i don't know how clean he is)

thank you very much for your answer.
appreciated

I looked them up WOW!!!!! nice nice.....




Raf

they are nice...but very hard to find in NSW....
i got my BEI duck while i was working at a wildlife park... someone donated her
right time right place...