Can you send me the name of who that was? I have purchased ringneck x golden hybrids and have never found a fertile one yet.
If either sex in a bird hybrid is to be fertile, it's more likely to be the male (Haldane's Rule). Also, do you know which way the cross went -- as in, ringneck male X golden female, or golden male X ringneck female? This can affect the chances of finding some level of fertility among the offspring.
This is a little bit of a tangent, but I think there are two different ways people come to keeping birds. One perspective is the farmer/rancher/chicken-keeper perspective. Their first birds were domesticated livestock. People familiar with livestock know good animal husbandry, breeding for productivity, incubation, selecting the best feed, etc. When they encounter an animal that fits into the general rearing practices perfected in the area of animal agriculture, they excel. But they also look at their non-domesticated species the way they look at domesticated poultry. "Chickens" and "Pheasants" become equivalent categories, and the next level of division is into "breeds." With chickens, breeds are defined by the way they look, and if they can reproduce themselves consistently -- "breeding true." If you want to introduce a new color into a breed, you can do so by crossing in a chicken with the color from another breed. Then just keep breeding back to the desired breed until you get what you want, and when it looks like a Leghorn and makes babies that look like Leghorns, then it is a Leghorn.
The other perspective is that of a zookeeper/aviculturist. Their first birds might have been a parakeet or cockatiel. They learned about birds through avicultural magazines (like Bird Talk) and chose the kinds they'd be interested in. They learned that while budgies, cockatiels, lovebirds, amazons, cockatoos and macaws are all parrots, their needs are vastly different, because the birds are vastly different -- they are different species originating from Australia, Africa, South America, etc., adapted to a variety of environments. Or they ventured into the bird world via finches, which are again divided into a variety of species, each with vastly to slightly different needs from the next one. Then there are softbills, a group lumped together based on general dietary requirements but differing vastly in size, behavior, origin, and taxonomic classification. The point is that this group had to get used to the idea that there was a great diversity of species, each with individual characteristics. They will ask "What is the ideal set-up and diet for this species?" and bend over backwards for individual differences. This is because the birds they keep begin as they are found in nature, and the goal is to maintain that piece of nature in captivity, and try to replicate the wild in the aviary.
When these groups overlap in interest, I see some evidence of conflict of philosophies. The first group might look at a breeding set-up for pheasants put together by a member of the second group and say "What a waste of space. My set-up is the same size, but I get much higher production because of how I lay it out. Why don't you use an incubator? You get more production per season. I think you're fiddling with them too much." And perhaps this person is right -- from the perspective of production, the former group's mindset is probably better adapted. But there's also a benefit to the second group's mentality. By coming from a mindset of familiarity with a range of different species rather than different breeds, there is more of a conservationist ideal inherent within them regarding maintaining purity of stocks. They understand that once you cross one species with another, the offspring from that or future generations can NEVER be considered pure, no matter how many times they are bred back to one of the original species. This is because what defines a species is more than just the way they look.
I see evidence of the first-group's way of thinking on BYC all the time. It works for domesticated poultry, but makes for confusion with non-domesticated species. Many times someone will ask "What breed of pheasant is this?" and I know right away that the person is coming from the first group. The problem with this is that when people think of pheasants being divided into "breeds" the way chickens are, they carry the attached idea that you can cross different "breeds" of pheasants to get pretty colors, then "breed back" to one of the original "breeds" to "get back to the SOP's requirements" and then you have a "pure" bird again. This is why I think it's important to understand the correct terminology, and stop referring to "breeds of pheasants" and start calling them "species." Along with that will follow the disuse of "crossbred" or "mutt" pheasants and the idea that they are "hybrids." We must remember that "breeds" are created by people by selective breeding, but "species" are found in nature, and are to be preserved as they are, not "improved" by hybridization.
BTW, I've never had pheasants, but even I can see that the Dark Throated Goldens originated from hybrids with Amhersts. Every pic I've seen of a Dark Thorated male shows a different tail barring pattern from a true Golden, showing evidence of its Amherst ancestry. I don't understand how people can honestly say they're not hybrids when the evidence is right there on the bird. I guess they're coming from the perspective that since they now breed true, they're pure again, so it doesn't matter.
