Mixed breed, mutt, unknown duck, what ever you call them these ducks have a mixed and sometimes unknown ancestry. Usually the term barnyard mix is applied to birds of completely unknown parentage or multiple generations of cross breeding. Our duck Kitty Wells came to us with a purported history of “Russian Giant” and Swedish. She is a large bird that lays rather roundish eggs. Princess Diana is half Khaki Campbell and her mother Sabrina is a runner Cayuga cross who lays a beautiful blue egg with a rather dark bloom. Diana’s half sister is Gizmo, half Kitty Wells and half Khaki Campbell. She is a prolific layer of eggs that are midway between her mother’s giant offerings and a Khaki Campbell.
There is no shame in owning mixed breed or barnyard mixes. I am a huge proponent of egg layers of all shapes and sizes. I also don’t believe in continually producing indiscriminate ducks. We had a runner go broody and nest in a predator filled zone. I also had an incubator that I was still learning to use. I threw her eggs in hoping it would work on my second attempt and I was rewarded with 3 odd mixed sisters. My wife started calling them Charlie’s Angels but Sabrina was the only one who kept her angel name. Kelly is still Leadbelcher, named after the shade of model paint that matched her down. Chris is Goldie, named for the gargoyle baby in the Sandman comics. Black Sabrina and Blue Leadbelcher are daughters of our only non brown drake at the time. Goldie is the daughter of Elvis or Sebastian. Her size indicates her father was our Buff drake and not our Khaki.
At this point I keep one or two purebred drakes so when Kitty and Sabrina go broody I know what to expect from the hatch.
I don’t lie about the cross breeds nor do I pretend they are anything fancy. At the end of the day a runner-khaki cross will lay lots of blue shelled eggs and that is a marketable product but they will not breed true. A “Labradoodle might be cute and desirable but it is not a distinct breed, it is a hybrid.
You are not creating a new breed in your backyard, you are having fun and dabbling.
I will also say that the advantage Elvis the Khaki Campbell’s cross bred daughters have over his purebred offspring is the simple fact they don’t suffer from ovarian cysts. While we are selectively breeding out the hereditary health issue in our khakis the process is slow. The cysts develop at 2 years of age so we won’t incubate eggs from the females until we feel they are clear of the syndrome. It is nice to have reliable layers that we can be certain will give us 4 solid years of production.
Diva Ducks 