Ashton Waterfowl

13/06/2024

I love the comment
https://fb.watch/sGU1L2XxTV/

08/02/2024

Too much rain for me -but the ducks are loving it

09/12/2023

This year's 12 gosling have now all grown up. All but 4 have gone to new homes.
Video is for grandson Joe who took to the largest African gander.

05/03/2023

Article published in Practical Poultry on the results of the 2022 breeding outcome to investigate autos*xing in geese.

A trio of auto-s*xing Shetland geese: West of England and Normandy geese follow the same pattern for colour as Shetlands. Females have a grey saddleback pattern, and males are almost white. You can tell the s*x by the colour. Any white gander put to a pied goose need not produce auto-s*xing goslings. So, what would happen if we crossed pure Shetland and pure white Czech geese in reciprocal matings?

25/12/2022

Merry Christmas from the Czechs - from a snowy Christmas past.

09/11/2022

A new duck book from Australia is now available
Produced by Andy Flett, the title is:
fifty: [re] collections
celebrating fifty years of Lance Ruting’s Elizabeth duck.
This is more than a tribute to the Elizabeth Duck.
It’s rich with historical content and packed full of information including new awareness of the genetics behind mallard-derived domestic ducks breeds. Australian breeds have also opened our eyes to the influence of colour enhancers in exhibition breeds.
There are general interest sections dedicated to selecting birds for showing from Australian fanciers Ross Rollman, and Andrew Brown and also Chris & Mike Ashton (UK) ... and a few pretty tasty looking recipes.
Currently, the book is the only option (ie not available as an eBook) and as it's fully self-funded and published and a small first print run, sales are directly through Andy Flett at [email protected]
More details are on the attached images

26/09/2022

This year’s Abacot Rangers are in the normal, standardized (not-blue colour), plus heterozygous blue and homozygous blue. The homozygous blue type was developed by Hans Ringnalda in Holland as the Overberg. It was never standardised in the UK because the duck is rather pale in body plumage (if she lacks the brown gene) - and the drake’s blue head is spoiled by a brown cast if he has the brown gene.
Unfortunately, this year’s birds bred only two females – and 10 drakes – four of which have been retained so far.
The strain comes from German birds which we imported on three occasions, plus a cross with a blue dusky Runner to acquire the blue gene (Bl) and ensure that the birds were dusky (md) rather than mallard (M+). It is possible that pure harlequin birds (lih/lih) can partially obscure M+ eye stripes, especially when there is additional pigment e.g. with a brown hood.
The photos show the three colour types of drakes hatched this year, plus the two standard ducks (not blue) . They were bred from a pen of two drakes (blue Bl/bl) and not blue (bl/bl) and two females – also not blue and heterozygous blue.

03/08/2022

Some of this year's Silver ( Harlequin ) Indian Runners at 8 weeks and, no , that video is not speeded up. They really eat that fast. To stop them choking, the pellets are fed in water. I'll have to train them to eat like everyone else when they have finished growing up! A lot of drakes this year unfortunately in these md/md, lih/lih with brown. Females look brown, the males are split for brown/not brown.

06/06/2022

Two goslings from the RBST Pilgrim project, with a white Czech male.
The grey female Pilgrim has s*x-linked dilution (Sd), so her wild colour grey is only part diluted. Her brother (in the centre) has two doses of dilution and appears almost white. Neither bird has white spotting (sp) because this has been selected out of the strain over several generations. In the UK, crossing Pilgrims with white birds, such as the Czech in the foreground, has resulted in cross breeds which lose their auto-s*xing characteristic. True Pilgrim males are solid pattern (Sp+) and must have a touch of grey in the wing feathers, plus some diluted grey feathers on the back and rump. White spotting (sp), in combination with (Sd), turns birds white, like this Czech.
Capital letters denote dominance; + denotes wild colour.

29/05/2022

In 2013, we got a pair of French Normandy goslings – auto-s*xing geese with the same colour pattern as the West of England and Shetland. The birds we hatched from that pair confirmed they were reliably autos*xing. The Normandy geese were eventually crossed with Shetland geese (which were in very short supply) and their auto-s*xing characteristics and colour pattern were maintained. These offspring were healthier that than their Normandy and Shetland parents.

In 2021 we also bought a pair of Shetlands from Green Tree Farm Shetlands in Yorkshire. At 2 days old, like other auto-s*xing breeds, the gosling female down is a shade darker grey than the male, and the beak colour is also darker. By the time these 2022 goslings are feathered at 8 weeks, the male will have lost the obvious grey saddleback/white spotting pattern and be almost white.

In the fluff, the pattern is almost the same in white Czech goslings. It’s just darker in the Shetlands in the video. Thus the pattern of white-spotting (leaving a grey saddleback) remains the same. This was explained in an article published in Liz Wright’s Smallholder Magazine (Kelsey) Nov/Dec 2021.

17/05/2022

Zoe Warner’s recent shots from Bali – the origin of some of J W Walton’s Indian Runners in 1909.
Letter to Walton: ‘I have sent you 14 ducks. Six of them I received a month ago from Mr Kalff, the assistant Resident of Mataram, for you. The rest I bought here but they were imported from Bali so that there is more chance of them not having been so much crossed. One of them has a top knot which may be of interest to you. Ducks with top-knots are fairly common here . . . I selected the most erect ducks I could find’.
Of the Bali ducks bought by Pownall, two were white and one white duck had a black tail. The latter was used with a Black East Indian to produce Black Runners eventually.
Zoe’s recent shots from Bali also include pied ‘American’ Fawn&White Runners i.e. pied with two blue genes, making them apricot.
Information from: ‘The Indian Runner Duck - a historical guide’ https://www.ashtonwaterfowl.net/indian_runner_book.htm

09/05/2022

Joseph Thomas has turned up a new reference to the domestication of geese …. 7,000 years ago in China.
Poultry are farmed globally, with chicken (Gallus gallus domesticus) being the leading domesticated species. … we studied goose bones from Tianluoshan—a 7,000-y-old rice cultivation village in the lower Yangtze River valley, China—using histological, geochemical, biochemical, and morphological approaches. Histological analysis revealed that one of the bones was derived from a locally bred chick, although no wild goose species breed in southern China. The analysis of oxygen-stable isotope composition supported this observation and further revealed that some of the mature bones were also derived from locally bred individuals. The nitrogen-stable isotope composition showed that locally bred mature birds fed on foods different from those eaten by migrant individuals. Morphological analysis revealed that the locally bred mature birds were homogenous in size, whereas radiocarbon dating clearly demonstrated that the samples from locally bred individuals were ∼7,000 y old. The histological, geochemical, biochemical, morphological, and contextual evidence suggest that geese at Tianluoshan village were at an early stage of domestication. The goose population appears to have been maintained for several generations without the introduction of individuals from other populations and may have been fed cultivated paddy rice. These findings indicate that goose domestication dates back 7,000 y, making geese the oldest domesticated poultry species in history.
https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2117064119
There will be a Zoom presentation tomorrow https://twitter.com/ChickenJClub/status/1521414923527598081?t=_nK8VHJZPp_TXQzdEH_b6g&s=19

“The Chicken Journal Club is back!! 🐓 Please join us on Zoom for the first talk of 2022 from Dr. Masaki Eda from Hokkaido University, Japan on goose domestication. 📅 Tuesday 17th May ⏰ 13:00 (BST) ”

04/05/2022

These birds have now gone to a new home.
They are top exhibition quality, closed rung (grey Poultry Club rings, hatched 2020). They are siblings and not suitable for breeding together. New mates are needed.
They can go separately. Serious breeders offering a good home please - with grass and attention. Vary calm females; gander also quiet with his handler, even in the breeding season.

29/04/2022

23/03/2022

Czechs hatched in 2021. These are super confident and chatty geese - described in Germany as birds that 'talk a lot of nonsense'. The ganders can get very hormonal in the breeding season - watch your wellies. This strain is a combination of birds imported from Belgium a long time ago, and those Graham Hicks 2013.

22/03/2022

Click on each of the photos for more details of the books.