Contents
The so-called blue favorite duck breed is in fact a broiler cross of ducks intended for rearing for meat. Officially, it is believed that a cross was bred based on the Peking duck with an admixture of Bashkir and black white-breasted ducks, but the color of ducks of the favorite breed is very similar to the color of the real duck breed “Swedish blue duck”. Perhaps just the second parent breed of this cross is just the Swedish blue.
The cross is quite “fresh” and, in fact, still experimental. More precisely, this is generally an intermediate result, which turned out to be very successful. Theoretically, advertising promises 7 kg of live weight for a drake.
In favor of the fact that one of the breeds involved in breeding the blue favorite was the Swedish blue, the splitting of colors in the offspring of ducks of the blue favorite breed also speaks. In the second generation, favorite ducklings can be not only blue, but also black, dark blue, light blue, fawn, brown, white and various variations of intermediate colors.
For comparison. The official standard for the Swedish blue duck is only blue, but Swedish ducks can also be black, silver or fawn. Which suspiciously matches the color options of the blue favorite.
After that, it is enough to recall that the breed of Bashkir ducks is, in fact, purebred Peking ducks, in which the wild color gene suddenly began to appear, and all color options for the blue favorite become explainable. No mysticism or telegony. Strict color genetics.
It should also be borne in mind that the blue color is a black color with a lightening gene. Which, by the way, none of the official source breeds have. That is, when crossing two blue specimens, at least 25% of black individuals are guaranteed to appear.
Black ducks of the blue favorite breed are not recommended to be crossed with each other, since in this case it is impossible to get a blue color. This is not surprising. If a clarifier gene is present in the genotype, it will always appear in the phenotype. If an individual is black, then it does not have a clarifier gene.
At the same time, it is not very desirable to cross blue individuals with each other, since the fertility of eggs will be lower. Or rather, the clarifier gene in the homozygous state is lethal to the embryo. An embryo with such a set of genes will die as soon as it begins to develop. If you set yourself the goal of breeding ducks by color, then it is better to cross black with blue. In this case, with a high fertility of eggs, 50% blue ducklings and 50% black ducklings can be obtained.
When crossing two blue individuals, you get 50% blue ducklings, 25% black ducklings and 25% rotten eggs. This is with a perfect 100 percent fertilization. Since far from all eggs are fertilized in birds, even fewer ducklings will turn out.
Description duck breed blue favorite
The breed of ducks favorite has a very large size, significantly exceeding the size of the parent breeds. And this circumstance again speaks in favor of crossing among themselves genetically divergent breeds of ducks. In principle, it can be a Beijing with a black white-breasted, but the latter does not have a clarifier gene.
Favorite is a large stocky duck with a dense build and an oblong body. Paws adapted to withstand considerable weight for ducks, short, powerful and widely spaced.
The color of the paws and beak depends on the color of the individual, but in blue ducks of this breed, the beak is usually almost blue.
The advertised weight of the favorite drake of 5 kg can only be obtained due to heterosis by crossing the Beijing with the white-breasted or Swedish. The Bashkir is still too close to the Peking duck. However, a more optimistic advertisement promises a weight of 7 kg, that is, the weight of an Indo-drake, which is hardly realistic.
Duck weighs up to 4 kg. There are also disagreements about her egg production. Somewhere you can meet the figure of 150 eggs per year, somewhere 120, and somewhere 100. Most likely, the number of eggs laid depends on the diet. When feeding duck stock with feed for laying hens, the number of eggs will be maximum, since vitamins and microelements added to this feed stimulate ovulation in birds.
It is better not to use a diet that is difficult to balance from home-made feeds, since it is an industrial cross.
Since the Blagovar cross is splitting in color, besides blue, there is also another branch of this cross: the red favorite. In addition to colors, these branches of crosses do not differ from each other. But, according to the opinions of poultry farmers who bought hatching eggs from the Blagovarskaya poultry farm, the eggs from which ducklings, overgrown with red feathers, hatched in incubators, were marked “Kr”. So it is quite possible that the red color is bred not as a cleavage from the total mass of ducks of the favorite breed, but as a completely independent branch.
The favorite duck has completely lost the instinct of incubation, therefore its breeding in personal farmsteads is possible only through an incubation egg or by laying eggs under other laying hens.
However, in crosses, splitting occurs not only in terms of colors, but also in terms of productive characteristics, therefore, in order to guarantee the production of a large meat duck, you will have to buy an incubation egg from the direct manufacturer of this cross.
But since the desire of the people to receive offspring in their backyard is indestructible, the buyers of hatching eggs after the hatching of ducklings necessarily raise the question: how to distinguish a duck from a drake.
Determining the gender of favorites
Duck blue favorite in color is practically indistinguishable from a drake even in adulthood. Unless the drake has a slightly darker head. But at the age of two months, favorites, like other mallards, have the same color. Therefore, you will have to wait until the young go through the juvenile molt and acquire the features that distinguish the drake from the duck, in particular, feathers bent by a hook in the tail area. But in this case, profitability drops, since favorite ducks reach a weight of about 3 kg by two months.
In addition, if the young are slaughtered later, then a lot of feather stumps remain in the skin. This is the main cause of complaints about the breed. Most likely, the fact is that the owners, wanting to leave part of the livestock for breeding, waited for the ducks to molt.
There is another way to determine where the drake is and where the duck is. In the video, various quacks are clearly audible.
Ducks quack loudly and drakes whisper. It is enough to catch a young duck and listen to how loudly it will be indignant in order to determine its gender. So there is no need to wait for juvenile molting.
They are no more quiet than any other mallards: after they have eaten.
Incubation of duck eggs
So far, the blue favorite cross is not very common, but the ducks have an unusual color and attract exotic lovers. Over long distances, it is much more convenient to transport a hatching egg than live ducks. In addition, since favorite ducks do not consider it necessary to hatch ducklings, those owners who want to get offspring from them at home are forced to use egg incubation.
When receiving offspring from their own livestock, duck eggs are collected within 5 to 7 days. Eggs are not washed, but they must be clean when placed in the incubator. Therefore, they try to collect eggs as often as possible so that the ducks do not have time to stain them. This breed is a big fan of burying eggs in the litter.
After laying the eggs in the incubator, the duckling breeding scheme is similar to that for any other mallard breed.
After hatching, the ducklings are transferred to a brooder. Although the advertisement claims that the hatchability of the favorite ducklings is very high, the veracity of this statement raises reasonable doubts, primarily because of the color. Plus, bird eggs do not withstand strong turbulence. If the hatching egg has made a long journey to the buyer, there is a possibility that very few ducklings will be hatched simply because the package was shaking a lot on the way.
The hatched ducklings are distinguished by good health and safety. If the eggs have not been infected with the infection yet at the manufacturer. However, any poultry eggs, and not just a favorite, must be bought from a trusted manufacturer.
Feedback from owners of blue favorites
Reviews range from “great ducks, very happy” to “doesn’t live up to specifications at all”. A couple of examples of such reviews.
To summarize
Such discrepancies are possible in three cases:
- favorite so far only breed group. In breed groups, individuals are often split into original breeds, so in fact Bashkir ducks with a blue color can turn out;
- with improper feeding, an industrial cross may simply not reach the declared weight, since it needs factory feed for broilers, and not home-made mixers;
- resellers, who themselves are poorly versed in the breeds or who want to earn extra money, sold the wrong eggs.
To avoid such problems, it is better to purchase eggs for the incubator at the blue favorite cross factory. Moreover, this is the only place where these birds are bred in mass quantities. You also need to follow the regimen and diet of feeding. And, most likely, adult drakes will gain their 5 kg, and ducks 4 kg.