Mallard/Muscovy cross----- Muscovy/Mallard cross ??

[elmacri]

Hello,

Hoping someone might be able to help with my confusion on this.
I have both mallards and moscovies together. They use to be seperate but somehow the muscovies just kept getting in with the mallards so in the end i left them.
I have heard that in the interbreed between the two breeds it will produce mules. However my question is.....

Are they only mules when its the drake muscovy copulates with the female mallards. ? I had heard if the drake mallard copulates with the female moscovies their offspring won´t be mules.

so confused and now worried i might be getting mules next week from a broody chicken that is sitting on duck eggs.

 

[Tahai]

Hi, Elmacri. These links to recent discussions may help you.

with regard to hybrids between different species. Basically, when two different species interbreed, the offspring with different sex chromosomes will be sterile before the offspring with paired sex chromosomes. In birds, females have different sex chromosomes (ZW, and males are ZZ). In mammals, it's the other way around (females are XX, males are XY). So when there is reduced fertility in hybrid birds, it's the females that will be sterile, and the males may be partially fertile. In mammals, the males will be sterile and the females may be partially fertile. When you read of rare cases of mules or hinnies being fertile, they were females. The rare times that a liger or tigon reproduces, it's always the female. In creating the Bengal breed of cat, male hybrid offspring between domestic cats and leopard cats are sterile until the third or fourth generation, but females can be bred. With birds, a familiar example is the red canary, created by crossing canaries with Venezuelan red siskins. Female hybrids are sterile, but some males are fertile. Breeding these males back to canaries is how the genes for red feathers were introduced. There are different proposed explanations for how and why this is, but the trend of hybrid sterility (if it exists...not all hybrids between different species are sterile...many are completely fertile) follows this pattern.

Edited by AquaEyes - 9/24/11 at 1:56am

And


Quote: Post # 19 by FarmrGirl - https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/575930/am-i-really-a-muscovy/10
Good Luck,

Tahai

 

[elmacri]

Thanks Tahai,

That has really helped.

I guess i am going to have to wait and see if i have pure muscovies or if my little Mallard drake has been having fun with the babies.