Duck Breed Comparison: Eggs, Size, Temperament and Mothering

Every breed page on every hatchery site says its duck is calm, hardy and a good layer. A table with all of them in it says something different. This one is Metzer Farms’ own comparison chart — twenty-one breeds, eggs a year, egg weight, adult weight, temperament on a numbered scale, mothering, foraging, whether they fly and how rare they are — transcribed from its cells — the Runner and Swedish rows span several of its colour rows, and the Rouen takes The Livestock Conservancy’s own rarity — with filters for what you want a duck for. Where Metzer leaves a cell blank, the table shows a dash rather than a guess.

Key takeaways

• The best layers sit on the nervous side of the scale. Khaki Campbell is 9.0 on Metzer’s calm-to-nervous scale; the hybrids 6.7–7.7. Most of the calmest breeds — Saxony, Call, Australian Spotted, Muscovy at 1.0 — lay less; Golden Cascade, also 1.0, is the exception and lays like a Khaki Campbell.
• Egg weight runs from 65 g (Magpie, Runner, Mallard) to 100 g (Pekin). A Pekin egg (90–100 g) is roughly a quarter to a half heavier than a Magpie’s (65–72 g).
• Only the Muscovy is rated an “Excellent” mother; Mallard and Silver Appleyard “Very Good”; Pekin and the hybrids “Poor” or “Fair”.
• Muscovy, Call, Mallard and Australian Spotted fly well. Most domestic breeds do not fly at all.

Reading the columns

Temperament is Metzer’s scale: 1.0 is a very calm breed and 9.0 a more nervous one. It is the column most people should read first and the one no breed page will tell you honestly.

Weight is the weight of Metzer’s breeders during lay, controlled for production — a Jumbo Pekin left to eat freely is heavier than the 9–13.5 lb shown. Metzer gives no separate male and female figures, so neither does the table.

Eggs a year is a range: the lower figure without artificial light, the upper with 17 hours of light maintained through lay. A garden flock without lights should plan on the lower number, and the flock planner does.

Egg size is in grams, at Metzer’s stated 28.5 grams to the ounce. The egg converter uses these figures to translate a recipe.

Mothering is Metzer’s rating of the breed’s willingness and ability to sit and rear. Foraging is how much of its own food it will find. Class is the American Poultry Association weight class. Rarity is the Livestock Conservancy’s ranking as Metzer reports it — Critical, Threatened, Watch, Recovering — and a blank means the breed is not ranked.

What the table says that the breed pages do not

The trade-off between eggs and calm is the whole story of choosing a duck, and it sits in two adjacent columns. Metzer’s Golden 300 and White Layer lay 200–290; they score 7.7 and 6.7 for nerves. The Khaki Campbell lays 165–240 and scores 9.0, the most nervous score on the chart, shared with the White Crested. At the other end, the Saxony, the Silver Appleyard and the Welsh Harlequin score 1.0 to 1.3 and lay 100–175. A family that wants to sit in the garden with its ducks will be happier with the second group and a fourth duck than with the first group and three.

The mothering column explains a lot of disappointed first-year keepers. Broodiness has been bred out of the laying breeds because a sitting duck is not a laying duck: Pekin “Poor”, Runner “Poor–Fair”, the hybrids “Fair”. If you want ducklings hatched under a duck, the chart says Muscovy, then Mallard and Appleyard, then the “Good” group — Rouen, Campbell, Welsh Harlequin, Magpie, Call, Australian Spotted. Broody ducks covers what happens next.

The flight column is the one to check before you skip the fence. Muscovy and Mallard fly “Excellent” and “Very Good”; Call and Australian Spotted ducks fly “Very Good”; Campbell and Rouen “Maybe”. Everything else on the chart is “None”.

Two breeds that are not quite what the row says

The Muscovy is a separate species from every other duck on the chart — it is usually silent rather than quacking (Cornell’s Lab of Ornithology), perches, takes 35 days to hatch instead of 28, and crossed with a Mallard-type produces sterile mules. Its temperament score of 1.0 is real but comes with claws; keeping Muscovy ducks is the honest account.

The Indian Runner is listed by Metzer in five colours with different temperament scores — 3.5 for Black up to 7.5 for Fawn and White — and different proportions of bluish eggs. The table’s single Runner row spans those, and says so beneath.

What is not here

Aylesbury, Ancona, Hook Bill, Orpington and the other breeds Metzer does not sell are not on Metzer’s chart and so are not in this table; there is no second source with comparable columns to add them from. Noise is not a column because Metzer does not publish one — the general rule is that females of every breed except the Muscovy quack loudly and the British Waterfowl Association says female Call ducks “do have a very loud quack”. And there are no prices, because those are Metzer’s business and change.

The narrative version — what each breed is like to live with — is the beginner’s guide to duck breeds; and if you have narrowed it to two or three, buying your first ducks is the next page. For the lighter version of the same question, which duck breed are you and the duck quiz are down the hall.