THE ROUEN AND ROUEN CLAIR DUCKS

Rouen Clair

The Rouen comes from Rouen in France (also known as the Rhone Duck) and its close ancestry to the wild mallard can be seen from the plumage. In Europe it has been used as a table bird and has been influential in producing other table breeds. In the last 20 years in the UK, it has been bred almost exclusively for the beauty of the plumage and markings, there are possibly no meat strains over this side of the Channel, unless someone has smuggled eggs over. They are close to Pekins and Muscovy in size and are said to have had the best flavour.
Once upon a time they were reasonable layers for a meat birds with some eggs having a greenish tinge.
Rouen pair of ducks
The utility bred Rouen is one of the more common non-commercial ducks in the U.S, popular in the restaurant trade. Its market seems to be growing since it produced leaner meat than the Pekin, the standard commercial duck in the U.S.
Exhibition Rouens do not have the production qualities that production types do. They have a very deep keel but its not covered in meat.

These ducks should be excellent foragers, calm in disposition and unlikely to fly, they are just not engineered to be able to! Drakes mature at about 8 pounds and ducks at about 7 pounds. In present day strains the laying rate varies; some very good strains average 100 eggs per year. This is now rare in the UK with so much selection for perfect exhibition features. One major problem is that so few people record the numbers of eggs that their birds lay - it is almost impossible to know where the good laying birds are. We need more owners to keep records.

From the British Waterfowl Standards the description of the breed is as follows
The Carriage is horizontal, with the keel parallel to and touching the ground. The head should be massive with a long, wide flat bill and bold eyes. The neck is medium, strong, slightly curved but not arched. The long broad body has a deep keel. the large wings are well tucked to the sides and the tail is very slightly elevated.
The legs are medium length with stout shanks well set to balance the body in a straight line.

Drake: His head is rich iridescent green to within about 2.5 cm of the shoulders where a perfectly white , clean cut (not quite complete) ring divides the neck and chest colours.
The chest feathers are rich claret forming a clear cut bib.
The flanks and stern have grey charcoal stippled pencilling on a lighter background. The feathers over the back are rich green black.
The tail is dark brown and the wings are slate brown mainly. The flashes are iridescent blue, tipped with black and white bars.
Throughout the colour changes should be distinct and well defined.
The drakes bill is bright green yellow, wiht a black bean at the tip and his eyes hazel. His legs should be orange-red.

However - having described the bird in so much detail it is the breeding to attain such minutiae of feathering, as well as the lack of demand for home produced meat is one of the reasons why most Rouens are poor layers and some modern strains are now virtually infertile. It is not possible to totally ignore the productive traits if you want to continue to breed a strain. Egg records are a basic - equally are fertility and hatching records. Obviously for this sort of breed the table weight is also important - that is not so much the weight of the live bird but meat on the carcass. On the live bird you want to be able to feel DINNER on bird's keel as you hold them.

Tim and Jill Bowis
Kintaline Mill Farm, Benderloch, OBAN Argyll PA37 1QS Scotland
all images are copyright, do not use without express permission and links back to this site.

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