Call Duck Colours

Ashton Waterfowl

Call Duck Colours

The White Call and the Grey (Mallard) Call were the first two colours to be standardized in 1865. These two colours are still the most popular colour classes of Calls at Waterfowl shows. Since 1865, new colours have appeared. Harrison Weir wrote about Calls in shades of 'blue and buff ' in 1901, but it took until 1982 for the Blue Fawn to be standardized. The Apricot was even later in 1997, even though it had been shown for many years, without a standard, because of its popularity. The Silver Call and Pied Call were standardized in 1982 as well.

Due to the popularity of Call ducks in the 1980s and 1990s, the 'new' colours of Bibbed, Magpie and, of course, Apricot achieved a standard description in 1997. The Dark Silver followed in 1999. Since then, the Black, Chocolate, Dusky, Yellow Belly and Khaki have been nominated for standardization too. Other popular colours are the Apricot Silver, and the Blue Silver which differ from the standard Silver only in having two extra blue genes and one blue gene respectively.

Find out more about all these 'new' colours from the club, Call Duck Association.

We keep a restricted number of colours of Calls, specializing in White, Apricot, Blue Fawn, and Blue- and Apricot-Silver.

Calls are very small and, in general do not lay a large number of eggs. Some females may not lay at all. Typical numbers of eggs are between 20 and 60 per year. This is quite unlike the Light Ducks which in the case of the Campbell can lay over 300 eggs per year. Partly for this reason, and partly because Call eggs are more difficult to hatch than Light Ducks and Indian Runners, good specimens of these birds are usually in short supply.

Our book The Domestic Duck has an extensive chapter on where Call Duck came from and how they developed, and illustrates many of the colours.

To find out more about Call Ducks and their colours, have a look at the Call Duck Association web site at www.callducks.net

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