Chicken/quail hybrid???

[le_bwah]

From your article, I see it says 2-3 weeks on page 4. I didn't see anything on page 3

Let's just say I've read way more than one article on bird fertility lol.

 

[Florida Bullfrog]

https://rep.bioscientifica.com/view/journals/rep/155/6/REP-17-0728.xml

None of the chickens hatched

The dark cornish hatched.

From your article, I see it says 2-3 weeks on page 4. I didn't see anything on page 3

 

[RoostersAreAwesome]

Yeah, hens can retain sperm for longer than 21 days. Many people have seen examples of this in their flocks.

 

[The Birb King]

View attachment 1080515 This lil guy looks cute <3

Where did you get that picture? I thought they were not closely related enough to breed and even if they did the offspring probably wouldn't hatch?

 

[Feathers1984]

I'm done responding to this thread, until it gets any bigger. When that happens, I'll let you all know.

Any updates?

 

[Chicken raiser393993]

Successful meaning that the embryos die before hatch or have a mess of health issues if they make it?
Sources?

I'll add my two cents in here even though it's been a while. Pheasant and Chicken crosses are not as rare as you think. It's a bit of a secret actually in the gamefowl world (gamefowl meaning chickens). I've had several people come buy some of my gamefowl chickens to cross with pheasants. There's a certain way to breed them where a specific generation becomes essentially a normal chicken but with Pheasant qualities. I'd assume the same logic can be applied to turkeys and quail but those are much further in similarity, and hybrids are much rarer (1 in 1000 eggs hatching for turchicken hybrids if I remember correctly). If you remember biology class, animals of the same species and genus can generally breed just fine, and there are many cases of animals within the same family that can breed. So it's not unheard of or impossible, and in fact it is proven to be possible in this specific case.

 

[Susan Skylark]

Personally I would avoid it. The reason being is that the seller is saying that the breeding happens by natural process, the only proven coturnix-chicken hybirds I have seen have been inseminated. All he has to do is not guarantee the hatch due to shipping concerns and send you any old coturnix egg since he supposedly has an easter egger bantam roo covering a coturnix hen. Even if he is getting hybrids by natural breeding there is no way the process is safe/humane for the quail, and that is leaving out the fact that chickens carry diseases that are often fatal to quail.

Here is some reading on the insemination subject. The fertility rate of inseminated eggs was low. The hatch rate was even lower. And this guy is selling "hybrids" that supposedly happen through natural cover? I'm skeptical to say the least.

I was doing some reading on the silver gene in quail and ran across a study that as part of it they crossed silver quail (AI) with a certain color of chicken (studying color gene inheritance) and of 500 eggs laid, about 20 developed and 2 hatched, not a very productive cross! It can happen but the odds are slim, especially with natural cover and not AI.