Muscovy
Duck
The Muscovy is not really a duck in the sense the rest of this list is: it is Cairina moschata, a tropical South American perching species domesticated long before European contact, and it is only distantly related to the mallard every other breed descends from. The differences run deep — it hisses and wags its tail instead of quacking, roosts in trees on clawed feet, sits on eggs for 35 days rather than 28, and crosses with mallard-derived ducks only to produce sterile 'mulard' offspring. Drakes can reach 15 lb and are nearly twice the size of the ducks, giving the breed the largest sex difference of any domestic duck. Muscovies are prized as broody mothers, voracious fly and slug hunters, and lean-meated table birds, but they fly extremely well and their bare facial caruncles are vulnerable to frostbite in northern winters.
Weight
How to spot it
- Bill
- Surrounded by bare red caruncles that swell over the face; heavier and more knobbed on drakes
- Carriage
- Long, broad and horizontal — closer to a goose's outline than a mallard's
- Plumage
- Any colour, most often black-and-white pied; a crest of head feathers raises when alarmed
- Legs & feet
- Short and strong with sharp claws for gripping branches
- Look for
- The red warty face and a bird that hisses rather than quacks; the only domestic duck that perches
Varieties
Pied
Find Muscovy breeders near you
30 providers currently list Muscovy.
Browse Muscovy breeders
