Hypothetical, khaki campbell x Muscovy 2nd generation

[Tofu the chicken]

So with quarantine I've just been learning a lot of bird genetics specifically about muscovies and I am getting muscovies but don't plan on having any other ducks in the close future, maybe in following years I'll test this experiment out but rn this question is purely hypothetical

So I learned despite popular belief muscovy crosses aren't completely infertile and when mated to a bird that isn't closely related has a 2-3% fertility rate, so to get numbers you'd need a lot of hatching eggs, but let's say you were to cross a khaki campbell (which are extremely good egg layers) to a muscovy would it be a better egg layer than a normal muscovy? And if it is could you just get a few of those crosses and breed them back to normal muscovies would it be possible to create a flock of muscovies that were good egg layers from breeding a few generations out or would the good egg laying trait be lost?

Thanks for alls responses, I decided to post cause I've been thinking about it a lot and can't find any information relating to this

 

[Isaac 0]

@Pyxis , or @TomCahalan might be able to help.

 

[TomCahalan]

I am interested in your results. Many "impossible" crosses have succeeded through sheer determination, a willingness to spend resources on folly.

Bird sex chromosomes are the opposite of mammal's. Instead of X and Y, they have a Z and W system. Male birds are ZZ and female birds are ZW. The W chromosome, like the mammal Y chromosome, has eroded to contain very little DNA.

According to Haldane's Rule, the sex with homozygous sex chromosomes (female in mammals, male in birds) is more likely to be viable and fertile in hybrids. This means that your hybrid drakes are more likely to be fertile than your hybrid ducks.

So what I would do is start with two flocks: a non-muscovy drake x muscovy ducks, and muscovy drake x non-muscovy ducks. Once the hybrids mature I would get rid of the pure-bred drakes and combine all three groups into one flock.

The hybrid drakes would have the opportunity to fertilize non-muscovy, muscovy, and hybrid ducks. Then incubate thousands of those eggs and see what happens. You are providing the drakes with purebred mates, so you are really testing drake fertility. This means that you want to keep as many drakes as possible.

If you see any success, great. If not, start all over again.