Welsh Harlequin Ducks are a great choice of duck breed. They are a new breed, the result of a breeding program involving an unusual color mutation of Khaki Campbells. A farmer in Wales, Leslie Bonnet, was the one to discover and develop this great breed of duck.
The Welsh Harlequin coloration is stunning and very unusual in domestic duck breeds. Males resemble a mallard in style, but the colors are muted with lots of white highlighting. The females are particularly striking and unusual in coloration. Female Welsh Harlequins are creamy fawn overall with darts of wine-mahogany over their shoulders and back and rump. Males have yellow-green bills and orange legs and feet, and females have dark forest green almost slate-colored bills and orange feet that mature to dark brown. Some breeders have started to distinguish a warmer-colored gold variation from the Welsh Harlequin breed. These hatching eggs will be the original silvery coloration.
Welsh Harlequin Ducks are small ducks - they were admitted into the APA in the Light Duck Class in 2001. They only weigh 4.5 - 5.5 lbs at maturity, but still, make a meaty table duck. They are easy to clean, with white under-feathers, and meat quality is lean and not greasy. Because of their small size, they are nice and easy to keep, and less demanding with less feed intake.
One of the best things about this duck breed is that it lays prodigious amounts of greenish-tinted eggs. They can lay between 160-190 eggs per year. Right after hatching, you can sex ducklings fairly accurately according to bill color. Darker billed ducklings are usually males. And a lighter bill with a dark spot on the end usually means the duckling is female.
Temperament-wise, Welsh Harlequins are energetic foragers and good setters. They tend to be friendly and calm ducks.
