2015 Breeding Season!!!

2015 is here! (Actually we are 19 days into it) but who's counting... I guess it is finally time to get the breeding plans in order. (I've had a vague idea for quite some time. But here is my draft of it as of today.) 

We have made a few changes here at the farm and discontinued working with a few our our breeds, and have decided to go a slightly different direction with another. So without further ado...

Welsh Harlequins:
     Since this is "our breed" and everyone knows we have them, we are going to use 2015 to dedicate even more of our time and resources to this wonderful breed. Our breeding flock currently has 11 females and 3 males in both silver phase and gold phase. We hope to sell hatching eggs, hatch a couple of dozen for ourselves to go through to pick out some "replacements" and some young show birds for this season. I also want to work on the Gold x Gold breeding project a little more to try to maintain the nice dark coloring in the plumage while slimming their overall body type down a little more. They are almost exactly the same size a most of the silver phase birds, but there are still a few here and there that show the influence of the Gold phase male we brought in from Clare Sheir's flock several years ago. (We no longer have that particular gold male and actually weren't very happy with many of his offspring, but did keep a few "for diversity". Young breeding pairs should be available around Labor Day weekend.

Muscovy:
      These silly white birds have managed to win us over more and more the longer they are around. Our main breeding drake acts much more like a dog than a duck. We have kept a trio from last year's birds and have our original trio of breeders so now we have 6 birds total to breed from. We are hoping to sell eggs as well as hatch out several of these (NATURALLY!) Letting the hens do the work. AND to Micah's dismay, we are hoping to butcher some of the extra males this year for our freezer. We will sell breeder pairs starting around Labor Day weekend. 

East Indies/Call Ducks/Mandarins:
       We have trios of BEI's and Calls and a pair of Mandarins. They are strictly ornamental birds here as well as the kids pets, so we will be keeping them all in their individual pens, but if we have any for sale it won't be until late Summer/Early Fall, and it won't be in any large number. No eggs!

(We only have a trio now.)

(We have a pair of Blue Fawn & a pair of Grays. White drake is sold off)

White Showgirl/Silkies:
      We are working with these crazy birds because the children love them! Our breeder trio has been laying but we have not had any fertility yet. We are LOOKING for additional birds to add to this breeding project. We do have one pure black Showgirl hen our of our white female and a different white male than the one we are currently using, but we have decided to go a little more in-depth with these birds and try to improve upon what we already have and add to them. We would be interested in Whites & Blacks, and both homozygous, heterozygous, and non-expressing birds from this breed. Please contact me at kswaterfowl@yahoo.com