Muscovy Ducks

Buff is a combination of silver and chocolate. These are a light tan or peachy in color, some will look like a dirty white. 

Chocolate combined with lavender will make creams. These tend to look like dirty whites and do not show blue tones. (Photo courtesy of Jeffrey Hopkins)

White is another common muscovy color. These are mainly raised as meat ducks as the white feathers allow the to dress clean.  Some will have a colored cap on their heads (referred to as "French Whites"). White can also mask other colors so white bred to colored birds can produce colors as well as pieds. 

Newly found in the US, bronze is the same as Sepia (term used in other countries). This color will look brown with a metallic hue to it, and they tend to have light colored feet and bills. This color can vary from light to dark in shade. It is a recessive gene so birds must have a copy from each parent to be bronze in color.

Fume is bronze and blue on the same bird. These will look smoky in color and lighter than blues. They will also have light colored feet and bills. 

Tortora is bronze and silver. They can vary in shade but tend to be a very light silver color and tend to have bleedthrough feathers in differing blue shades.

Platinum is bronze and lavender. This color tends to be lighter in shade than lavender, and has a metallic hue almost like an opal! 

Copper is bronze and chocolate combined. It appears to be lighter in color than chocolate, bot not as light as buff. And has a slight metallic hue to it. Like lavender and blue/silver, it is advised not to combine these colors simply as they can easily be confused with one anther to the untrained eye. But test breeding can help determine true color.

Pied can be found in any color. They are birds with white on them, generally in a non specific pattern.

If only white on the chest, then it's "Bibbed". But white anywhere else would make a pied.

"Magpie" is often confused with pied but is a separate gene. Similar to the lavender color, the magpie pattern can only be reproduced with birds that carry the magpie genes. In appearance, they have a colored cap, saddle on the back, and tail. 

"White head" is also called the Canzine gene. This is a dominant trait found in many flocks. The amount of white that shows on the head depends on how many copies of the gene a bird inherits. It can show up as early as their first adult molt around 4 months old, or it can take 2-3 years for the white head to cover the entire head.

Barred birds are easy to pick out. As babies, they are always yellow with a colored tail tip. The color of their tail tells you what color they will feather out to be. The barred pattern is white plus color, in a striped pattern, on the feathers. It shows up best as a juvenile (a duckling's first set of feathers) and generally covers the whole body. But as the bird molts into adult feathering, the barring tends to disappear. It can molt out entirely, it can show only under the wings and on the back, or if can show on most of the body through selective breeding (rare to find birds that do not molt the barring out).

Ripples used to be rare but are becoming more common in backyard flocks. The pattern is easy to pick out as it shows on all feathers and does not molt out like the barring. It is one color in various shades in a striped OR laced pattern on each and every feather. The ripple gene does dilute colors though. So chocolate ripples look more buff in color. Dark ripples (black) can look blue in certain sunlight, etc. Ripples can also be found in any muscovy color. As ducklings, these usually do not look different than non rippled muscovy. I have had a couple that hatch with ripples showing in their down, but most do not. So you have to grow these out at least to tail feathering to see if they will be ripple.

Looneys are still a rarity in muscovy and theres very little information about them. I have made it a point to take pictures and document looneys for educational purposes. Genetically, looneys are a combination of ripple and barred on the same bird. In order to be a true looney, the bird must have a copy of each from both parents. As ducklings, these look like barred babies. Yellow down with a colored tail tip. Some will also have a black/grey hue to their down.