ON another site I was beat up by suggesting breeding crested ducks to call ducks. It was suggested that cresteds are freaks. that there is a hole in the head at crest site and feathers can grow into brain!! Also by breeding a large male to small female, the embryo will somehow grow to big for the egg. It just makes no sense to me. I ask for proof, everyone had some, stillwaiting for it. Any input on this. I am confident,most info on this site is reliable.

I have been attempting a similar cross for a few years. I have had limited success. I am using a white mallard drake on a rather small white crested duck. I have been cautious of the reciprocal mating as the drake would be awfully large to mount a small duck. I have hatched some from this mating, but not many. I have seen him mount her, and everything indicates he is doing his job, but for whatever reason fertility is extremely low, less than 20%. I have yet to hatch a duckling with much of a crest. A tuft is the most I have come up with so far.
Anyway, crested ducklings DO NOT have a hole in their head, they have a fleshy knob that the feathers grow out of. Occassionally you will see a deformed duckling that has a depression in the knob & I suppose that feathers could frow into this, but those ducklings usually don't survive long. The crested gene is a natural mutation that happens occasionally in most all breeds. The crested breed has simply been bred to enhance this mutated trait.
I am not positive about the embryo growing too large for the shell, but in my experience with chickens, that is usually not a problem.

The crest in waterfowl is supposed to be a recessive lethal. That means that if you cross two crested ducks 1/4 of the embryos will die, 1/2 will have crests and 1/4 will be normal. This may only apply to geese. 20% hatch means that something else is wrong too. Inbreeding or inadequate mating, nutrition, health, parasites etc.

Yes, the crested gene is recessive lethal, with percentages as stated above. Definitely holds true for ducks as well as geese.

Thankyou both. Mark, is this your only waterfowl breeding. I find ducks rather interesting and i really enjoy them on the table. I may just leave the calls out of my breeding and work with crested, buff and swedes. I am interested in the cr genes and color combinations.

Robbpa, I breed crested ducks & have been "piddling" with trying to come up with the bantam crested. My main crested flock is made up of blue, black, silver, chocolate, & lilac swedish patterned ducks. I also have a pastel drake with the largest crest I've ever seen, so I am hoping to breed that crest into my swedish pattern ducks. I don't know much about duck genetics, so I've been doing it by trial & error. I would like to add some geese to the farm, but haven't found any breeds that I like really well. I think Buff Pomeranians are the leading breed so far.