This listing is for 1 pair (1 male 1 female) of split to silver wood ducks. This pair have the gentics to produce some silver colored offspring. Infomation on these gentics is explained in more detail below. Care of these birds is the same as that of regular colored wood ducks and is described in the regular colored wood duck pair listing.
Split Silver Wood Duck Pair
- Before completing your order please read over our shipping policies and the conditions of our "Live Arrival Guarantee"
Please also read over all of information contained in this listing.
Initialing the box above constitutes, knowledge, acceptance and understanding of all policies and/or information contained in this listing and on the shipping info pages listed above. If you have any questions please email us with them @ mallardlanefarms@gmail.com before completing your order. In our experience if left full-winged on open water, most wild ducks will eventually fly away. If you choose to keep wild ducks on open water we recommend having those birds pinioned. Pinioned birds have been made permanently flightless by the surgical removal part of one wing.
If you would like your birds pinioned please choose the pinion option above. If the pinion option is unavailable you can use the "pinion my bird" listing instead.
Terms and conditions for pinioned birds
Pinioned birds will require time to heal before shipping. This is can take 1-3 weeks. You will receive an email within 72 hrs of check out with your shipping date. All birds on your order will ship together on the date in this email. If you would like any birds shipped separately on a different date please e-mail us at mallardlanefarms@gmail.com with this request. (Additional shipping charges may apply). We reserve the right to delay shipping if we feel the birds need longer to heal than originally estimated. Delays are normally 1 week or less.
Once the birds are pinioned, that portion of your order can not be changed or cancelled. For most orders birds will be pinioned within a few hrs of the order being placed. Price of the birds and pinion fees will not be refunded should customer want to cancel the order. If there is ever an issue on our end in providing the birds full a refund would be given.
All birds we sell are fully feathered and adult sized. We do not sell ducklings or half grown birds. Most of our birds are between 4 months and 1 year of age at the time that they are sold.
On our "Care Info" page you can find a list of frequently asked questions and answers concerning the care of your new birds. If you have questions not answered on this page please email them to us at mallardlanefarms@gmail.com and we will be glad to help you with them. Your questions may be added to our page.
Most photos used throughout our website show males in full color which is their winter/spring plumage. Your birds may or may not be in full color depending the particular species and the time of year in which you are ordering.
Please note all photos used on our website were taken here at Mallard Lane Farms and are of our birds. To better represent our birds we do not use any stock photos.
All about Wood Ducks
The male wood duck is one of the most beautifully decorated birds in north America. Wood ducks are hardy, easy to keep are probably the most commonly kept wild duck in the United States today. They are often one of the first species that beginners acquire. Most collections have at least 1 pair of these stunning birds.
All about Wood ducks
The beautiful Wood duck is a common aviary bird. They are hardy, and are suitable for a mixed collection. It should be noted that wood ducks are one of the more nervous of the ornamental species, they often can benifit from having a calmer species in the avairy with them.
Wood Ducks are cavity nesters and will require a raised box for nesting. At Mallard Lane Farms we have boxes hung from 2-5ft off the ground. We have found that our birds like having varity of different boxes hung at different heights. A ratio of three boxes for every two nesting pairs is recommended. Wood ducks are first year fertile and often will nest their first spring. While their cousin, the Mandarin will commonly trio, I myself have had no success at breeding Wood Ducks in trio's. Breeding season is in Spring, and begins in March in my region, however I have collected eggs as early as February and once in December. Clutches range from 10-16 eggs and are incubated for 28 to 30 days. If the eggs are removed early in incubation the hen will often produce a second clutch. Second clutches will normally consist of less eggs than the first.
While most experienced waterfowl agriculturist find wood duck ducklings fairly easy to raise, many people attempting it for the first time often find them quite challenging. For the beginner excessive losses of ducklings at about 4-6 days of age is common, and usually results from the fact that they did not settle down enough to begin eating, or did not like the food or the way it was presented.At Mallard Lane Farms we start our Wood Ducks on Mazuri Waterfowl Starter. Listed below are a few tips that we commonly use to get these ducklings eating.- Sprinkle foods on brooder floor and onto the ducklings themselves
- Smear moistened food onto sides of brooder
- Place food in small containers of water (we use pickle jar lids) mazuri will float
- Put a duckling of another species (of about the same size) in with them. This duckling will help teach them to eat.
- Feed live meal worms
Once the ducklings begin eating well they are no more difficult to raise than many of the other ornamental species.
Buying from Mallard Lane Farms
When you buy from us you are buying directly from the breeder, which saves you money!
All birds we sell ship directly from our farm , we do not use other farms to drop ship orders for us.
All birds we ship come with our "Live Arrival Guarantee" which is one of the best shipping guarantees in the business.
Rest assured that you can contact the breeder should you have questions. We are knowledgeable breeders of every bird we sell and all birds come with email support for any questions or concerns you may have about your new birds for the entire lifetime of those birds.
Mallard Lane Farms is a NPIP approved farm and is certified AI clean.
Our NPIP # is 63-312.
We hold state and federal permits for the sale of wild waterfowl. Federal paperwork will be sent with all species that require it.
What does Split to Silver mean?
Split/Silver is a term commonly used to describe those birds that carry the genetics to produce some silver offspring, but are not silver themselves. Split/silver birds most often acquire these genetics by having one parent that is silver.
Listed below are breeding results that I have recorded for some of the silver and split silver pairs listed above. Percentages are approximate and may vary from your own breeding results.
- Pair consisting of two silver birds- all silver offspring.
- Pair consisting of 1 silver bird and 1 split/silver bird- about 50% silver offspring all of the remaining regular colored offspring will be split to silver.
- Pair consisting of one silver bird and one reg bird (not split)- all offspring will be regular colored but all will carry the silver gene and will be split/silver.
- Pair consisting of two split silver birds- about 20-25% silver offspring, of the remaining regular colored offspring about half will be split/silver and half will not carry the silver gene. It is important to note that there is no way of telling the splits from the regular birds in this mating and these offspring should not be sold as split birds as there is only a 50% chance that they will be carrying the silver gene.
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