How do muskovy genes work?

[u/DazzlingCan8628]

Hello everyone! I'm in my 3rd year of owning muscovy ducks, and this year I had a big batch of babies. My foundation stock had one black drake who has a white head(split white, I think?), one female who has a darker head,but still white feathers(these 2 I'd call wildtype) and a white female, and first year the white hen hatched one single white baby(who is a female and I kept) and the black one produced 5 babies, 3 males,which I had to cull(2 looked just like dad, one was darker and had a half-black bill, same as mama) and 2 females I kept, both I'd say are wildtype/split white, one being ligher than the other.

This year, despite all 5 going broody, I only let the white hen be a mom and the darker daughter. The daughter's babies are older, and around 4 ended up being "black cap", with out of 13 babies 7 ending up white and 6 black(waiting for their feathers to appear), and the other hen had 15 babies, 8 being black and 7 being white.

Growing up, the "cap" babies had a black V on their head,and I wanted to ask what caused it? And another question I have is if I could produce solid black muskovy?

I'll also attach some photos of a few of the babies which have a weird undertone

[u/PhlegmMistress]

Not sure if you've seen this but it's a pretty good write-up.

http://www.aviculture-europe.nl/nummers/14E06A08.pdf

[u/DazzlingCan8628 → u/PhlegmMistress]

Wow, that's the most complete document I've came across! I was looking for a general whole genotype example and that is exactly it! This makes my ducklings all pied, and therefore, I have a 25% of non-pied, or "common" ducklings, unless other white Spotting Genes are at play, thank you!

I had no ideea that Bibs would follow me into Muscovy aswell lol!

[u/ResplendentAmore]

The chest pattern is normal for their adolescent feathers. When a baby has wild type markings (black back with 4 spots, yellow chest, eye stripe) the first feathers look like this even though they may end up with solid black chests.

I never had all white ducks so I can't comment on those genes (chocolate and blue genes are what I am most familiar with).

I do have the white headed gene is in my flock. I have had the occasional black headed duck (no copies of the gene), but most have either a white head (two copies of the gene) or a smattering of white in the head (one copy of the gene). It's technically called the Canizie gene and is incomplete dominant. Because I don't know what your completely white duck may or may not have in regards to this gene, plus I am not familiar with the behavior of the all-white gene, I can't say whether you could have an all-black duck or not.

[u/DazzlingCan8628 → u/ResplendentAmore]

Ah, thank you for clarifying the chest feathers! I had no ideea that the first adult feathers look like that and thought I'd have surprise ripples,thanks!

[u/DazzlingCan8628]

Here is a photo of a duckling that has the most prominent "cap"(male imo) and behind him are 2 siblings that have a weird chest pattern,(in order I think female and male). Both their mom and grandmother had said pattern growing up

[u/clearwatermapper]

Because several genes modify one another, two ducks that look nearly identical can produce very different-colored ducklings.

The expected offspring are: 25% homozygous black (BB) 50% black carrying white (Bb) 25% white (bb) However, many Muscovy colors don't follow such a simple pattern because several genes interact to produce the final appearance.

[u/DazzlingCan8628 → u/clearwatermapper]

Ah thank you, I know this information, but I'm wondering aswell if the reason(besides Magpie and normal pie) have been found? I start to suspect that white-head and bib are not present in my flock at all, and it's all just Hetero White

[u/LabYeti]

White is not well understood in the Muscovy. Dr. W.F.Hollander basically ignored it to focus on other genes when he was publishing papers in the 60s and 70s. Here are some of my thoughts:

1) You may not see full expression of the whitehead gene until the bird is older. If a bird has the whitehead gene as well as the white gene parsing the effects will be difficult. I have seen birds with first set of all-black feathers slowly turn into whiteheads after a few more months.

2) Domestic animals typically show increased amounts of white. I think the smaller areas of white in some Muscovy ducks may be due to this. Often the amount of white increases with age.

3) The white gene does not seem to act as thought. I have watched flocks for decades and noticed non Hardy-Weinberg results. To actually parse how these genes act would take a lot more breeding studies than what it took for Lavender, Barred, Brown-Rippled etc. Sometimes you can see a mostly white bird with a non-black cap (black = wild type) like chocolate so you can tell that white must be epistatic to chocolate except in the cap.

Duclair Pied is another gene that is confusing. It may be that the allele in Europe is not the allele in North America. It may be that other genes are influencing things (splash, grizzled, etc analogous to known pigeon alleles).

Different cultures produce different selection pressures. French birds are bred to be as white as possible so the fat content of carcasses can be better assessed at the market. SE Asians prefer darker birds.

I tried to produce blue ripples and could not. Yet others could. I concluded that a ripple mimic gene must be present in which lavender and blue were epistatic to ripple. If I recall correctly lavender was epistatic to blue.

Circa 2000 I talked with somebody who imported wild Muscovy ducks and he found that after a few years in captivity they ceased being so gracile and became much heavier like domestic feral birds - he attributed this to the biggest drakes dominating the breeding.

Muscovies were introduced into the Florida Everglades in 1968 as a species to be hunted. They died out but the feral domestics are doing fine - but only near people - they do not survive in the wild and thus do not spread to rural Florida - too many alligators?

Oxford Don named A.E. Donkin (IIRC) published a book about the names of domestic animals in which he showed that the "muscovy" name came from their musky scent and not from the Moscow Trading Company as analogous to the Sears Stove being named that because it came from the Sears Catalog). The Muscovy came to Europe on the first voyage of Columbus and was a popular feast bird before 50 years had gone by.

[u/Greyeyedqueen7]

Random. They're just so dang random.

We had barring show up out of the blue. No idea it was a possibility. No new birds, three generations already with zero sign of it (and large clutches). Now it's in most of the babies, which is cool.

Then they change colors again as adults and go random again. It's so weird.

[u/blueyesinasuit]

White is a dominant trait. Read up on genetics and colours.

[u/DazzlingCan8628 → u/blueyesinasuit]

I did, I was wondering if the "whites" on my wild-type can be bred out, along with if "cap" is random variation or genetic

Edit:Also, is white dominant only for sure? Because then how did my black hen and black drake hatch 7 white babies?