Crested Ducks | Duck Breeds

Breed Rating (4 Reviews)

Appearance
Friendliness
Hardiness
Egg
Garden

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Crested History

Crested ducks have a wonderful regal air about them. There are reasonably good layers but mostly kept for pets. Crested ducks have been around for a long time and feature in art dating back over 2,000 years.

Crested Behaviour

You can tell the quality of the crest from the moment they have hatched. If you are breeding these birds, then avoid ones with off center crests as this is a defect which is very difficult to breed out. The crest is actually a dominant mutation and typically you have around a million to one chance any breed of Mallard duck will hatch with a crest. The crested gene can actually be bred into any breed except Muscovy. The gene which produces the crest has the side-effect of preventing about 25% of the fertile eggs from hatching. An additional 25% do not hatch with the crest. They are fairly quiet birds, with the female only making a noise when she wants attention.

Crested Varieties

There are two officially recognized varieties, White and Black, although you can find ducks with crest in most colors.

Crested Pictures

Crested duck in public park in sacramento, california.

Crested duck posing with blue background

Latest Reviews For Crested (5 of 5)

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Based on 5 Verified Reviews

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Best duck - Holly, 17 May 2024

Our Crested duck snuggles into our arms and nuzzles our neck with her cute head. She is a sweetheart. We don’t know about egg production yet.

Afro 🦆 - George, 23 March 2023

I George would like to proudly say that my duck Maxwell Lexington that I received from this store was an absolute menace to my garden and literally destroyed all my plants and crops as well as trying to start fights with not only me but also mercilessly attacked a pigeon. Please fix your ducks behavior.

we have pekins including 1 crested female and 1 crested male [kept in a separate flock from th female - Ruth, 22 October 2021

Our female crested is smaller than the other pekins: weighs only a little over half as much; she has reliably laid an egg daily from 16 weeks old although she prefers to get out of the pen in the morning and lay her egg behind our compost bin. The other pekin females lay in the pen. Your assessment that crested are quiet amuses me as our female crested is the noisiest little duck in the world. She shouts at first light; she shouts when she is hungry; she shouts when we come near the back garden; she shouts when she wants the other ducks to come to her; she shouts because she likes the sound of her voice. I can supply a recording to demonstrate. She can also fly -- and does to get to the gate first or get to me giving out treats first, she will fly over the other ducks as they run up. She is a real cutie pie! Our male crested is about as loud as the other male pekin -- much quieter than the female ducks; and very much quieter that the female crested.

excellent breed - Amy, 25 June 2021

These ducks are incredible and very cool. They are flawless apart from their tendency to run when they hear the word proletariat or guillotine. They enjoy cake and don't believe in poor people.

fun ducks - Grace, 26 July 2014

It has been years since I was around these ducks. We did not seem to have trouble with eggs not hatching. They did cross with our runner ducks and we had a lot of runner build ducks with the crest. We really enjoyed them.