Ancona Ducks are an american heritage breed classified in the watch section on The Livestock Conservancy’s breed list. Although often thought of as a British breed it has since been shown that this breed originated in America. We started our current flock of Ancona Ducks in 2013. However, I had my first Anconas back in my 4-H days. We collected birds from 4 different locations to start our breeding flock. Ancona’s are a dual purpose breed. They are decent layers but also make an excellent meat bird. They are very hardy, good foragers and a great breed to raise on pasture. They are very strong and durable birds. This is a medium weight bird that should be big enough to be a meat bird. The interesting pattern and color variations of the breed tend to become more important to many people and they forget about the bird underneath so many times they tend to be very small. Our farms concentration is primarily size and conformation. Then we look at pattern and color as just the paint job on a nice bird. This breed can come in many designer colors, however we focus on the original color of the breed being black and white. That will be the first color to get accepted into the APA and all colors need to be done individually as each is its own separate variety. The pattern can be very tricky to get just right and it is very easy to produce solid white, tri colors, and under marked birds. We are working with the APA currently to get the breed recognized. We were able to get them to their first recognition show in 2020 and were shown in the second recognition show in early 2021.