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| Holderreads order 2005 - includes show quality runner ducks and Shetland geese |
Look closely at the above picture. The drake in the center is featured below. He was as tough little guy
that never gave up trying. He was one of the first to eat from my hand. But look how small he is. His development
was a full two weeks behind all the others. He did eventually catch up, but he had other problems as you will see.
As I said on my opening page, not every duck hatched is suitable for breeding. And not every duck shipped to you by
even the best breeders in the world is suitable for breeding. The same close breeding that can create stunning
show quality birds can also create genetically defective ones that should not be used for breeding. In my world, that
usually means eating them for dinner so I know no one can use them to make more babies that would, no doubt, become more and
more deformed with each generation of indiscriminate breeding.
I discussed some of these things with Dave Holderread the summer of 2005 when my order of runners had grown enough to
see how they were developing. As I recall, he said they only keep the top 5% of their grown out birds for breeding. I
try to do the same within the limits of what I have to work with. (I have eaten some beautiful and friendly birds
in order to keep them out of the gene pool because they were defective in some potentially inheritable way. And
I have sold numerous others as absolute pets only for the same reasons.) In that order was 7 pairs of show quality penciled
runners. I ultimately kept one drake and 3 hens. In choosing my keeper drake, I was particularly picky because
his genes stand to influence so many more potential lives than any given hen would. Never having been to any shows,
only having a handful of pictures and the written word to go on, I think Patrick is an outstanding example of the breed.
His gait is smooth and flowing and he stands verticle almost constantly. The only real fault I can find with him is
that he doesn't hold his tail down as much as I would like. Patrick is the good specimen in the pictures that follow.
The rest of the drakes in the bunch couldn't hold a candle to him. One, Gilligan, came close - having a sound gait and
overall good confirmation. But he had a frequent curve to his neck that often spoiled on otherwise nice top line.
I don't remember that he had any real defects that would have concerned me from a breeding standpoint, though. The rest
were quite a disappointment. They were tall and slim and generally very upright, but there were curled toes galore,
several wing tips that wanted to flip outward and had to be taped and even a wry tail. (I should mention, I always
use Purina Duck Starter and then Purina Duck Grower feeds, which they had access to at all times. And I added oatmeal
in order to reduce the protein level just a bit to try to avoid problems from too rapid growth. They all had access
to plenty of grass and room to run from sun up to sun down.) I felt the hens were overall nicer in quality, but
I do have a couple curled toes on two of the ones I kept. Theirs are not as bad as the drake in the pictures here, but
not perfect specimens just the same. The hens only have one odd outer toe joint that does not lay straigth. Overall,
of the three hens I kept, I think only one is on a par with Patrick.
But don't get me wrong, I am NOT trying to trash Holderreads here. It is simply a fact of life, genetically
speaking, that breeding animals to produce something far different from what nature intended can lead to things no one wants
to see. Runners are about as far away in body type from the mallards they are decended from as you can get!
That is why any one intending to make babies should do some research and make educated and calculated decisions about their
breeding stock. Nothing is sadder than to see a brand new baby duck too crippled in some way to keep up with his siblings
and not able to get enough food and water to survive. I have had one such duck hatch here. It was not from show
quality birds. But the chances of producing such defects greatly increase with the more closely related gene pools of
the show quality birds.
So, enough of the speech - here are the pictures of a couple of those drakes.
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| gray banded drake has curled toes, Patrick's toes are straight for comparison |
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Next is the drake with the wry tail, meaning his tail was constantly cocked to one side. I never got a good picture
of this when he was alive to show it. It seemed he was always sleeping next to somebody or otherwise lost in the sea
of ducks when I had my camera out. But I banded them all so I could watch each individually as they grew and made mental
notes of those with problems. The ducks with unforgivable problems were all named Dinner early on so as to help me start
getting my mind around the idea of what would need to come someday. (Don't gasp in horror - unless you're a vegetarian.
If you are eating meat, someone, somewhere is killing animals for your consumption. Mine have as fun
and wonderful a life as I can provide until that day comes.) So anyway, the pictures on the dinner plate are of the
spines of two of the culled drakes. Pretty obvious which one belongs to the wry tail drake. Glad I kept
that out of the gene pool. I did keep one hen who I noticed much later has a similar problem. She was the only
trout colored hen I received (she is second from the far righthand side of the group picture a the top of this page.
You can see that she has no problem yet at that age). She was a special bonus as they were short on the grays I had
ordered and is a beautiful color and one of the boldest of the bunch. I can often catch her by simply reaching out and
grabbing her in the middle of the yard. Her spine is off set higher up. Her tail is straight, but shoulders are
offset so that she holds her head in line with the left side of her body. (What happened and when? Did
one of her bigger goose buddies grab her and jerk her? She never showed any sign of a problem until one day, when she
was long since finished growing, I noticed things are not right.) But being a hen, it is easy to avoid hatching
her eggs. If I want to be absolutely certain not to hatch her eggs, it is a simple matter to pen her separately
for a night or two while I collect eggs for hatching. A drake would have to be confined alone for weeks on end.
That is why she is still here and the drakes are not.
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| wry tail drake |
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| the pelvis section of the spines of two of my culled drakes - wry tail drake on the right |
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