Jungle Fowl

[RobG7aChattTN]

Had anyone ever been able to get any Fertile hybrids of domestic chickens and Green Junglefowl breed more than one generation? I've heard that some first generation crosses (Ayam Bekisar) roosters are fertile so I'm wondering why no one has been able to get some of that feather color or that's amazing comb color from the Green Junglefowl into a domestic breed of chicken.

 

[JimArcher]

According to Eugene M. McCarthy, "Handbook of Avian Hybrids of the World", the hybrid has been made in captivity and the hybrids - male and female - are partially fertile.
He refers to "FEAT" - Feathersite - which is a great source of poultry breed info and pictures. Check that out. There are a number of Indonesian Breeds which go by the names of Ayam Cerami?, Ayam Bekisar, and I think others.
I will check it out and get back to you. The Indonesians are very fond of Ayam Bekisar, which are the Green Junglefowl male crossed with domestics.
I Googled Gallus varius hybrids and there is a lot there. Apparently the hybrid hens lay eggs that are infertile with any rooster. I am quite sure that you would not have to make too many many backcrosses to domestic hens before you would get fertile "hybrid" hens. In my opinion one backcross would do it. But you need a big sample.
If you start the process yourself, with a male Green Junglefowl on domestic breed hens or RJF hens, make sure you keep your numbers high. Use several hens for the first cross, and then use all their F1 sons on a good number of domestic/RJF hens. You should get a good number of offspring. Mate these first back cross birds together in a flock. Do not do any selection as you want to get a fertile group of birds first. The production from this flock of first backcrosses will likely be poor - egg production, fertility, and hatchability will likely be quite poor. You will get some good chicks, however. Again, mate these offspring together in a group and you should get good results - pretty much the same as for pure breed matings. You can then probably select for color, comb etc. among this group. Not sure how that part will turn out.
I did this with Syrmaticus reevesii and P. colchicus and ended up with a flock of very fertile birds. Unfortunately I moved and that was the end of it.
The F1 birds from my pheasant cross were large vigorous and at least partially fertile males with a very small and infertile hen. My only choice was to cross the male F1s back to female P. colchicus. I couldn't cross back to the Reeves male as he had passed on.
You will need good incubators - I used Marsh incubators and had good results.
If you do get F1 hens you could try mating them to Domestic/RJF roosters. Maybe use a domestic breed that has coloration nearer to what you want - birchen ...? Apparently the F1 hens are sterile, but lay eggs.
You would need lots of space/pens etc..

 

[centrarchid]

I would suggest using an American Game as your starting point on the domestic side. Getting the calmer behavior on the front end with help control survival / hatch issues complicated by flightiness. Another suggestion is you work hard to tame chicks immediately after hatch, preferably by using some live insect prey to get them accustomed to you. I have worked with many types of captive reared wild animals and found the taming component can make or break you.

 

[RobG7aChattTN]

I have two older 1200 series GQF incubators and a newer 1500 series hatcher. I know there are some that are considered better but at least they aren't the styrofoam type. I saw an interesting YouTube clip where a male Green Junglefowl was being used to cross with domestic hens to make the Ayam Bekisar. The rooster was kept in a small bamboo cage (I know not recommend but maybe to prevent it injuring itself flying around in panic?) and the hens were presented vent-first I to the cage, held by the keeper the whole time and the Green Junglefowl rooster quickly mounted her and she was immediately removed. If that works it would at least avoid the problem of large hens that might not like a tiny rooster. I could also skip the game chickens and possibly go right to using large fowl hens of better temperament and a better rate of lay (maybe Cream Legbars). I wouldn't worry about any characteristics except fertility at first. My first chickens I started out feeding live mealworms by hand and at least as far as regular chickens go that sure seemed to tame them quickly and easily. It looks like the preferred diet is seeds, insects and berries. That's certainly a bit of a hassle but if I only had one Junglefowl rooster it wouldn't be too difficult. My biggest concern is that the second generation or back cross might always be 100% sterile. If it can be done I'm definitely interested.

 

[orientphoenix]

wow sounds like a expensive project. i would probably use leghorns or birds that produce lots of eggs to insure a higher number of eggs and possibly fertile eggs at that.

 

[centrarchid]

I have two older 1200 series GQF incubators and a newer 1500 series hatcher. I know there are some that are considered better but at least they aren't the styrofoam type. I saw an interesting YouTube clip where a male Green Junglefowl was being used to cross with domestic hens to make the Ayam Bekisar. The rooster was kept in a small bamboo cage (I know not recommend but maybe to prevent it injuring itself flying around in panic?) and the hens were presented vent-first I to the cage, held by the keeper the whole time and the Green Junglefowl rooster quickly mounted her and she was immediately removed. If that works it would at least avoid the problem of large hens that might not like a tiny rooster. I could also skip the game chickens and possibly go right to using large fowl hens of better temperament and a better rate of lay (maybe Cream Legbars). I wouldn't worry about any characteristics except fertility at first. My first chickens I started out feeding live mealworms by hand and at least as far as regular chickens go that sure seemed to tame them quickly and easily. It looks like the preferred diet is seeds, insects and berries. That's certainly a bit of a hassle but if I only had one Junglefowl rooster it wouldn't be too difficult. My biggest concern is that the second generation or back cross might always be 100% sterile. If it can be done I'm definitely interested.

Hybrid games will have superior temperament in tight confinement. They will also introduce responsiveness to taming efforts. I am advising based on a great deal of experience involving a breed and the production of interspecies hybrid where at least one is wild.

 

[JimArcher]

I wouldn't worry too much about lack of fertility in backcrosses. It is possible that some F1 hens are fertile (Gray, A.P., 1958) so I believe that the backcross hens ((Gallus varius X Gallus gallus) rooster X Gallus gallus hens) will be fairly fertile. It might not even be necessary to have large numbers of birds to achieve/find fertile hens. The roosters should be fertile anyway.
Check out "Bekisar" on Wikipedia, and other articles that you can find if you Google "Gallus varius hybrids". I don't believe anyone has made a systematic attempt to produce fertile hens that carry 25% G.varius genes.
I think the problem is that people want a bird that looks just like the F1 hybrid male and once you backcross to G. gallus you will lose a lot of those plumage characteristics. Once you get a fertile population of 25% or 12.5% varius blood, you will have to breed them together and look for the colours etc. that you want.
There is a breed called the "Saipan Junglefowl" that is from a South Pacific island (Saipan), and they may have some varius blood already. Try some of those hens - preferably with a color you like, or close to it. There is also a theory that the Araucana breed of chicken is descended from varius because they have the blue egg gene. Varius also has that so that breed may be a good candidate for crossing.
Then there is the possibility that these fertile backcross hens could be backcrossed to the pure varius rooster. They might be more compatible and produce fertile offspring right away. (????)
A problem is that repeated mating together of hybrids often results in a loss of fertility over time. That is why flock mating is good; because the more fertile and compatible birds will produce more offspring (if you incubate all the eggs produced from the flock). Natural selection for fertility
Many things to try.

 

[JimArcher]

Chickens are vulnerable to loss of fertility through inbreeding so that could be a cause of reduced fertility over the generations. Do as much flock mating as possible with as many roosters and hens as you can.
The Saipan Junglefowl are Indian Game in appearance so that might indicate a compatibility with varius.

 

[centrarchid]

I am dealing explicitly with fertility issues in a hybrid population. To fix a given individual is mated to several so we can identify high fertility individuals each generation. We also look for individuals that give consistent fertility regardless to whom they are mated. Inbreeding ultimately will be part of fix as it will be needed to mate individuals that have similar arrangements of genes across chromosomes. Meiosis in the hybrids initially mess things up as crossing over causes many individuals to have abnormal copy numbers for some genes and that can harm fertility or cause death.

 

[JimArcher]

Centrarchid - what I found with my hybrid pheasants was a population of 1st backcross birds that had very poor egg production, fertility, embryo survival, and hatchability. Our facilities and labor (a large pheasant production facility hatching over 100,000 ringnecks per year) had smaller breeder pens for small lots of breeders, but very little for individual breeding tests. I was pretty pessimistic about the chicks I got from my first backcross flock mating (all the hens with all the cocks), but I put them in a pen that fit them. I forget how many there were since this was many years ago, but it was a nice number. I was absolutely amazed that this flock of hybrids produced very well. Egg production was good, fertility was good, and hatch ability was good. If I had been able to flock mate again, I think the results would still have been as good or better.
I think that this approach will give you a nucleus stock of good fertility and then you could proceed as you recommend. Flock mating allows each hen to be serviced by a number of roosters and when the most compatible sperm fertilizes her egg, that egg will hatch. In the case of incompatibility you will get infertility or else death during incubation. In the next generation of flock mating the same thing will happen and will fix the compatibility of the genes in your flock.
My process was: 1- Reeves cock x Ringneck hens. Off spring were 2 large hybrid roosters and 1 puny, no breeding hen. 2 - 2 F1 roosters x 7 or 8 Ringneck hens. A good number of chicks were produced, but I cannot remember the results on fertility or hatchability. 3 - 1st Backcross offspring all mated together. Flock mated. Results were very poor egg production and very poor hatchability. 4 - the offspring from 3 were mated together in a flock. Results were excellent in terms of egg production, hatchability, and survival. I was amazed. End of experiment due to moving to Australia.
This could have been the time to start selecting for colour or whatever, but I would have preferred to make another flock mating to further fix genetic compatibility and fertility before making individual matings.