Silver Apricot Call Ducks

[MattL]

I aquired a pair of Silver Apricot Call Ducks thanks to Jerry Foley and would liek some more information about them. History, breeding tips, etc. Anything is appreciatied!
MattL

[Pathfinders]

I don't know anything about them other than they were adorable!

[Evy]

Aren't they the British name for a badly colored Pastel / Snowy cross ? That's what the photos in the Call Varities booklet look like.

[MattL]

I got some feelers out for some more info, Evy, I do know they are sports from the Butterscotch and my guess some kind of Blue dilute or derivative. Just loved the color on the little devils and I wanted to get back into Call ducks without taking a second mortgage out on the house.
MattL

[Evy]

I got some feelers out for some more info, Evy, I do know they are sports from the Butterscotch and my guess some kind of Blue dilute or derivative. Just loved the color on the little devils and I wanted to get back into Call ducks without taking a second mortgage out on the house.
MattL

You're right about the ridiculous prices. I sold some birds over the weekend & figure I didn't ask enough...no one even blinked! LOL
I saw a couple females at the show that were entered as Butters that looked like the photo in the handbook...no eyestripe at all, very pale color. You are most likely right about the origin.

[Hummer]

Matt, The 'Silver Apricots' are very similar to Butterscotch in this country. The Silver Apricot drakes are very similar to Butterscotch drakes. The color of the hens is where you see more of a difference. The Silver Apricot hens lack the eye streaks and have a lighter base color than Butterscotch hens. I won't attempt a long diatribe on the genetics this morning since I am still on jetlag from Ventura!!!! LOL. Here is a little bit of information on the background of Silver Apricots from the British Call duck website.

http://www.callducks.net/apsilv.htm

Hummer

[MattL]

Thanks Steve, that helps a bunch.
MattL

[Brice]

hey guys.....

Have not posted in awhile, but thought i would jump in here about the apricot silvers.....

First of all... the Butterscotch is a double blue dilution(pastel shade) of the appleyard color pattern...

The silver apricot is the double blue dilution(pastel shade) of a snowy pattern....

Now with almost all families of butters, you will get ap-silvers hatched out here and there.... I attribute that to the original beginning of the butters when they were crossed from pastels and who knows what exactly...
So basically all the butters in the US must have some snowy genes behind them some where that is hiding behind their appleyard pattern that shows. And when you breed enough of them, then pop up... They are a really neat color of duck! I wish i had more room when i had the ducks, but i just didnt have room to get another variety going....

So really.. the ap-silvers could be called "pastel snowy" but the UK already has a name for them, so thats why the name stuck here on this color......


When breeding for the ap-silvers you want the males to have a yellow/orange bill which really does stand out against the color as all other colors of blue diluted calls have a tan/brown/greenish shade to thier bills. Also the males are a noticeably lighter color than butter males. the females are mostly white on thier bodies with coloring on thier backs.. they also have a solid head and neck color of a tanish brown.


Brice Wonders
www.wonderswaterfowl.com (http://www.wonderswaterfowl.com)

[MattL]

Thanks Brice, you were on my list, run me down at Columbus so we can chat!
MattL

[rollyard]

Edited

[Evy]

For what it's worth, Graham Oakford told me that he developed the Snowy from a light patterned wild Mallard. Lou Horton might be your best source of info on them & the Butters. He worked with Graham for many years on them.
As far as genetic info, I think you'd do better to use the US terms for the varieties. Apricot, Silver, etc. aren't recognized here & it's confusing. IMO:''dusky'' is nothing but a disqualifing fault & should be culled, not bred into a line. However, it's nice to see someone really studying the colors. Sadly, the goal here among so many new breeders is to just throw anything together & give the results a name. Type on Calls is suffering terribly as a result.
Links to other sites are welcome here. The more info , the better. :-)

[goosedragon]

For what it's worth, Graham Oakford told me that he developed the Snowy from a light patterned wild Mallard. Lou Horton might be your best source of info on them & the Butters. He worked with Graham for many years on them.
As far as genetic info, I think you'd do better to use the US terms for the varieties. Apricot, Silver, etc. aren't recognized here & it's confusing. IMO:''dusky'' is nothing but a disqualifing fault & should be culled, not bred into a line. However, it's nice to see someone really studying the colors. Sadly, the goal here among so many new breeders is to just throw anything together & give the results a name. Type on Calls is suffering terribly as a result.
Links to other sites are welcome here. The more info , the better. :-)
Hi Evy! I found this poor Aussie (rollyard) asking genetic questions over on BYC and not getting any replies, So... He is not likely to know the Breeders you mention, Frankly I don't know screen names or email addresses for them either.
It would be nice if all the English speaking breeders agreed on names, but they don't and being my usual blunt self, I don't see a great deal of agreement here in the USA either. As you know I am not a breeder and if I were and about 20 years younger my goal would be be to produce Bantam (not Calls) of some of the more exotic varieties that are at least partly Standardized. But as you have told me before "it ain't going to happen":sad:

[rollyard]

Hi Goosedragon, yep still no response on the other site & will see if I can get one here to the same questions in this sites other waterfowl area :razz:

Evy, I agree, very confusing & does do my head in sometimes, but I guess we live & comunicate globally these days so familiarity with relationships may be a necessary evil (to some degree).

Cheers :smile:

[dhw]

Snowy is light phase(trout) with the harlequin modifier. Harlequin isn't something that you can creat it is a mutation so you must use a harlequin carrier in every mating in order to keep it. Snowy x Gray will produce 100% light phase harlequin carriers but the color will be expressed as gray(mallard) if you cross them back to snowy you will get half snowy and half carriers... If you went back and forth for, oh, 10 years and then spent another 10 years on fixing the color you might have something competitive. With is being a recessive there is no way to make the progress like they did with the butters unfortunately.

Snowy could carry dusky and the cross to the grays would bring it out in a couple generations. If that was the case you could also breed it out of them. The dusky factor will eventually destroy the color as far as I am concerned and will make them definitely not breed true in the long run. Being without the dusky gene makes them darken naturally which is easier to deal with than lightening.

Snowy calls were the very first color I had back when I was just a kid(12 I think). We bought a couple pair directly from Graham at the illinois game breeders swap in Illinois for a rediculous amount of money but my mom loved them.

If I survive the documentation required for this mortgage I am contimplating something that might be stupid. I have been informed by the better half that I can have calls and runners lol... I think that means I have to be sneaky about anything else. But... If I stuck to that I would have room to raise a ton of birds in some special project type of color. Anyone know where a person can pick up some "decent" snowies? I know where to get grays...

On a side note... you are dealing with some seriously complicated genetics on the apricot... Basically is it diluted mallard + light phase harlequin. Any cross is going to be all over the board and expressed as multiple colors both carriers and not carriers of either of the genes. It would be pure luck to improve them with an outcross.

[rollyard]

Edited

[dhw]

the problem you run into is that snowy can be expressed 2 ways with nearly the same results as far as looks...

M+M+ lihlih e+e+ bl+bl+ C+C+ s+s+ B+B+ r+r+ D+D+ Bu+Bu+

mdmd lihlih e+e+ bl+bl+ C+C+ s+s+ B+B+ r+r+ D+D+ Bu+Bu+

The first would make it relatively simple to cross back and forth with grays... the second would be more complicated but you could come out with either form with the right crosses. The surest way to tell is if you cross the snowy to gray and those offspring back to snowy... If the second is true you will get bibless gray drakes. If you don't get bibless then it is the first. I suspect most in the US are the first since there would be little to no point in breeding dusky into them.

The other way to breed them is to get as many of the best you can get your hands on and hatch hundreds of them and cull with an iron fist. That is always an option too. I don't believe anyone in the US has taken that approach.

I believe apricot "silver" is dusky + harlequin + blue dilute.

I have never seen an eye stipe in birds here but the vast majority of the time they are so washed out in color you wouldn't be able to tell.

[Evy]

Hi Goosedragon, yep still no response on the other site & will see if I can get one here to the same questions in this sites other waterfowl area :razz:

Evy, I agree, very confusing & does do my head in sometimes, but I guess we live & comunicate globally these days so familiarity with relationships may be a necessary evil (to some degree).

Cheers :smile:

Lou Horton was one of the major breeders for many years. He & Graham worked on Butters & Pastels right up until Graham's passing a few years ago. He could probably give you some insight on the Snowy, as well. Don't know if this email is up to date but it worked the last time I used it.
lehorton85@ameritech.net
You might enjoy his website acornhollowbantams.com

[dhw]

so neither standard for snowy specifies eye stripes in the duck though the illustration that Graham did for the bantam standard definitely shows them on the duck. As was stated before though the color of the ones in the US isn't even close to what the standard calls for overall. The ducks are way too washed out and the drakes tend to be too dark and lacking the lacing called for.

So I dug my standards out of the boxes that were packed when we left Wisconsin almost 5 years ago... The wife hasn't noticed yet :???:

[rollyard]

Edited

[rollyard]

Evy, thanks also for info & links, will have a look at web site now

Cheers :smile:

[dhw]

Well a snowy drake has a very interesting bib... It is both extended and "diluted"(doesn't seem like the right term)... It comes down the breast and then breaks extended down the flank forming an inverted V shape. On the breast it is frosted with white and down the flanks it is laced with white.

These are the best snowies I have ever seen personally including the ones I saw when I visited Graham in the late 90's. This is what we would be striving to uniformly produce as far as color. The type on these is also as good as I have seen on a snowy. Sorry for the size of the duck picture... I would rather just link to the source than move it and resize it.

http://wnypoultryclub.webs.com/snowy01a.jpg
http://wnypoultryclub.webs.com/photos/Call%20ducks/snyfem03-1.JPG

[dhw]

Back to the apricot... Any cross runs a huge risk of introducing things that will come back to haunt you unless you want to raise lots and take a few years to prove out the genes in the stock...

There are just too many recessives to work with so you will get birds that show one color but carry something very different.

I would love to see some pics of the birds you have.

[rollyard]

Edited

[dhw]

That buff coloring in the female is what is called for in the US standard. I think those two birds are fine examples of what the color should look like. Her speculum should match the drake with the blue/purple sheen.

Maybe it is dusky in there too. That would go against the common thought on the make up but again I have never seen one with an eye stripe of any sort.

The comment about the pictures was actually directed to Matt, the person who started the thread before snowies hijacked it.

[rollyard]

My misunderstanding again then. Sorry about hijacking your thread Matt, so back to the Apricot Silvers.

Cheers

[KSWaterfowl]

Just to add to your discussions, I have a snowy female with eye stripes.
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_dn5ZUHtexCs/TKJhPMWBMGI/AAAAAAAAA-I/57yuyypXtic/s400/P9280745.JPG
She's one of my breeder snowy mallards...still shows some Call influence, but the bill length is getting there. Here is one of the drakes as well.

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_dn5ZUHtexCs/TKJhPd1CqtI/AAAAAAAAA-Q/MAWRnT747DE/s400/P9280747.JPG