Duck Breeds

From heavy duck breeds like the Aylesbury or Rouen to the ‘bowling pin’ Indian Runner or the tiny but noisy little Call duck, there’s usually a breed of duck that will tickle your fancy!

Classes of Duck

Domestic Duck breeds are grouped into Heavy, Medium and Light weight classes in the standards.

Commercially, ducks have been bred for their meat, foie gras and eggs and have therefore contributed to the domestic breeds of duck we still have today.

Picture Right: A Crested duck, one of the more unusual pure breeds of duck.

Standards for pure breeds

Besides the standardised, pure breeds, keep in mind that not all white ducks you see are Aylesbury’s, just as not every white goose is an Embden!

Commercially, there are many crosses that have been created along the way because of the demand for fast growing, table ducks. Therefore, there are many ‘white ducks’ that you see on farms are not pure breeds.

Hybrid crosses

As well as these commercial ‘white ducks’ that can be seen on farms, there are many other regional ‘hybrid crosses’ that breeders have created for smallholders because of a demand for utility ducks – i.e. ducks to produce eggs or meat for the table.

For eggs, most crosses include the Khaki Campbell and for the table, the Pekin and Aylesbury are popular.

Duck Breeds Guide

In this guide, you will find images of every duck in the UK Standard with information and photos on an individual breed page.

Click on the blue link under a picture to go to a more detailed breed page.

Abacot Ranger (Male) Light Duck	Aylesbury (Male) Heavy Duck	Bali (Male) Light Duck
Black East Indian (Female) Bantam Duck	Blue Swedish (Female) Duck	Call (Female) Bantam Duck
Campbell Khaki (Male) Light Duck	Cayuga (Male) Heavy Duck	Crested (Male) Light Duck
Crested Miniature (Female) Bantam Duck	Hook Bill Dusky Bibbed (Male) Light Duck	Indian Runner White (Male) Runner Duck

Magpie Black and White (Female) Light Duck	Muscovy Black Magpie (Female) Heavy Duck	Orpington Buff (Male) Light Duck
Pekin (Female) Heavy Duck	Rouen (Male) Heavy Duck	Rouen Clair (Female) Heavy Duck
Saxony (Male) Heavy Duck	Silver Appleyard (Female) Heavy Duck	Silver Appleyard Miniature (Male) Bantam Duck
Silver Bantam (Male) Bantam Duck	Welsh Harlequin (Female) Light Duck

We have taken many pictures of ducks at poultry and waterfowl shows but if you have a photograph of a good example of a domestic breed in a natural setting, I would certainly be interested in hearing from you.

I get many requests from people to identify a breed of duck they have seen on their local pond. Sadly, these ducks have usually been dumped there and are therefore cross-breeding with other wild or domestic ducks visiting the pond.

Please note, you should never release domestic ducks into the wild as Zoe explains in this article.

Global Standards

Breeds of Domestic Ducks are classified in the UK by the British Waterfowl Standards published by the British Waterfowl Association. They align with the Poultry Club of Great Britain Standards that are produced.

There are other breeds of domestic duck standardised in other countries. The following organisations maintain these standards for domestic ducks:

• the American Poultry Association in the United States.
• the Entente Européenne d’Aviculture et de Cuniculture in Europe.
• the Australian Poultry Standards in Australia.

Images are Copyright 
Please do not use these images without permission.

Duck breed pictures credit

Besides my own photos, I have to give an extra special thank you to Rupert Stephenson, poultry photographer who has worked with me to capture some of the duck breeds pictures for this guide. Most importantly, I would also like to thank the British Waterfowl Association and Poultry Club of Great Britain members for their support in allowing Rupert and I to photograph their ducks at various poultry and waterfowl shows over the years.