Pheasant Chicken Hybrids

[bemba]

So, it seems there is some controversy about my little cheasants. Who would have thought that something so small could destroy 7 generations of pheasants, and all the ringnecks in China? LOL

I have a trio of Melanistic Mutant pheasants, and I didn't plan on ever hatching any more ... they're far too wild for my taste. So I'm not sure how the "7 generations" comes into play. Plus, they're MUTANT and really shouldn't be released into the wild population. So it's not like I'm preserving the ringnecks species for the future. They are ornamental MUTANTS that are collected by hobbyists and that is all they are.

I agree you shouldn't mix pheasants which could further contaminate the limited gene pools ... like mixing Red Golden with Lady Amherst. I made sure (as much as is possible) that my Red Goldens are pure ... they came from zoo stock.

And yes, these hybrids are probably sterile, but if any turn out not to be, I would like to breed them back to chickens to get new colors in chickens. I don't see this as a problem since chickens are a domesticated animal and it's not certain what species went into producing them in the first place.

With all that said, I can continue to keep anyone who is interested updated on the hybrids progress, or I can have this thread removed. I really don't enjoy being put down for something that so fascinates me and doesn't harm anyone or anything.

Yes very well said! And my point exactly! And PLSSSSSSSSS Don't delete this thread! It is extremely interesting! I for one can't wait to see what they look like fully grown!

 

[jammyjammy2112]

tony i understand that you want to keep the pheasant population pure. do you realease your pheasants tony and here in ireland i gave my silkie to a man who wanted her to hatch rare pheasants and release them to the wiild 3 hatch and survived and are now living in he wild. There is no way one man is going to make pheasants go extinct becouse he rared 3 hybreds

Dont remove this tread it is very cool to watch them grow and miture.

 

[Tony K T]

I can understand the desire to keep a breed pure but most lines were a hybrid once. If this destroys flocks then free ranging birds is a problem. If it can happen in captivity then it can happen in the wild. There are ring necks in the orchard behind me and I let my rooster out often, like many farm people. It hasn't killed them all off yet and I doubt it will.

I don't know where you get your info from but pheasants are not hybrid in the wild.There are 43 true species of pheasant,none from crossbreeding.
In N.H.,Tony.

 

[Tony K T]

tony i understand that you want to keep the pheasant population pure. do you realease your pheasants tony and here in ireland i gave my silkie to a man who wanted her to hatch rare pheasants and release them to the wiild 3 hatch and survived and are now living in he wild. There is no way one man is going to make pheasants go extinct becouse he rared 3 hybreds

Dont remove this tread it is very cool to watch them grow and miture.

No I don't release my pheasants,But if I was contacted by an organization and ask if I had a breed they were short of and I had them.I would hatch and raise them and ship them where they are needed to repopulate.
The most common mistake people seem to think that there are only ringneck pheasants.Like I said in my other post there are 43 true species.
In N.H.,Tony

 

[chooks4life]

I understand that they might be infertile,but it still takes away 7 generations of pure birds in the process.With numbers in the wild diminishing,we need all the birds to remain pure.Take as look ast the endangered species list.There too many pheasants on there now that you would think are safe,like swinhoe,edwards,mikado.I know for a fact that there are 10 salvadoris in the U S.I think it's time to stop all the crossbreeding and help the species.

How does this 'take away 7 generations of pure birds in the process'? It's one hen. Do you say that because you expect her to produce seven generations? She should hopefully be bred to a male of her species, but by the sounds of it this is an interim happenstance since the male was lost. For all we know something worthwhile may come from this, stranger things have happened. But there's every chance the hybrids failing will put an end to it.

I am not sure whether it's the end for pheasants, a lot of people are saying they want to to try this so who knows. But I'm more concerned about the genetics side of this.
I hope these hybrids are not bred from other wise there could be some weird problems.

There are weird problems with various breeds of chooks and turkeys, in my opinion many purebred strains are worthy of being dogfood and nothing else. Except maybe pets.

Hybrids are very unlikely to manage to breed but if they do, even if there are genetic problems, the threadstarter is not doing anything worse than what many purebred breeders are doing with non hybridized birds and other animals. Look at some breeds of dogs --- their teeth do not even meet. Some breeds of cows routinely have deformed spines. There is no species of animal we keep that does not show some fault. Often we deliberately preserve it.

It's worth considering potential ramifications of some of our other commonly accepted breeding programmes. Some of these, if the unexpected happened and they got out of control, could leave no environment for pheasants to live in, never mind anything else. These are far more worthy issues to rise up in condemnation of than an uncommon attempt at making hybrids of two captive species which are known to mostly fail to hybridize.

Case in point: the bulk of the world's species depends on several small, often annoying species, including rodents, insects like flies, gnats, mozzies, etc, and other pests we devote a lot of time to destroying and are now tackling on the genetic levels, with most of the public's whole-hearted but short-sighted support. Even herbivores depend on them; creatures which do not directly eat these insects depend on other creatures that do; more plants are pollinated by various insects including flies, beetles, moths etc than by bees. Creatures that live in areas that don't have these species would have little or nothing to eat if some of their prey species did not spend part of their life cycle eating insects in different countries before travelling there.

We keep and breed countless strains of rats and mice for research which develop many diseases and failures of system, which are often freely available to be ordered by anyone whatsoever, and are often released or escape; before they die they can breed with wild populations; now before you think the whole lot of mice/rats etc dying of cancer or whatever would be great, remember they are a large part of our global ecosystem which is all interlinked, and to lose the food source of so many species would lead to many, many extinctions; it'd snowball and nobody can accurately predict what would become extinct, since our knowledge of our global organism is very fragmented and incomplete. We depend on things being the way they have been, and most if not all of us and our animals would not survive a sudden complete extinction of one of these prey species I've named.

Same with developing dud species of flies. The world depends on flies and other insects, even places that do not have flies have species whose food depends on flies or other creatures that depend on flies. Despite our dislike of them, we need flies, rats, mice, mosquitos, etc but nobody complains when they're genetically modified by breeding or other manipulation to be destined to fail, and to be able breed that on.

It's valid to worry about losing one higher-level species and try to protect it, but people should be more worried about what's happening to its environment and food sources than they are about a one member of the species being not included in a breeding program. But if they become extinct in the wild, despite people's best efforts we can basically expect to lose them in captivity too, gradually, with them degrading slowly into extinction. When I look at zoo-bred animals, many of them show serious genetic signs of worse offspring to come; they will not be fit nor able to repopulate the wild. But at this rate there will be no 'wild' to repopulate, anyway.

The bottom line to my examples above is that while Tony's concern is valid, breeding one pheasant hen a few times with a rooster isn't going to condemn the species any worse than its loss of wild habitat. If this person bought up large stocks of rare pheasants to cross with chooks, then sure, they'd be contributing to the extinction of pheasants. I've seen more badly bred examples in captivity than good ones though.

 

[Tony K T]

Let me try to explain it.You breed a red golden to an Amherst,their offspring are 50/50.In order to breed back to pure birds you breed the hens back to the father which gives you a 75/25.You take the hens from that batch breed to original male this gives you a 87 1/2/12 1/2 breed that hens from that batch back to original male gives you a 93 3/4/6 1/4 repeat for 3 more generations and you will never get back 100% birds.I believe the % is 15/16 pure at the 7th year.This is called line breeding.Meanwhile all these birds you have hatched where do they go?Most people sell them as pure birds and that is where the gene pool goes to hell.So if a hen lays 12 eggs per clutch and most people pull eggs so the hen lays more so I will use 20 eggs as an easier number to work with.Now just saying all 20 eggs hatch(we knowq that doesn't happen)you end up with 10ales and 10 females(and we know this never happens.Now those hens will produce 200 eggs between the 10 of them for the next season.So there's 200 birds contaminated just that first year.Now the 200 birds produce 4000 contaminated chicks the next season.Yes just 2 years and 4000 birds.It doesn't take long.Now remember this started with a pair of birds.Now imagine if 50 people decided to do this that's 20000 birds in 2 years.And again it all started with 2 birds.
The cheer pheasant was close to extinction a few years back and between avriculturist,scientist,sportsmen and wildlife officers.politicians(believe it or not)and educators collected eggs from 25 breeding pairs hatched the eggs and introduced the chicks back into the wild.Helping save the cheer pheasant.This is what we as stewards to these birds should be thinking of saving them in pure form not destroying them.
I think I have explained correctly,but if I haven't please someone step in and explain.
Has anyone seen bats this year?How about honeybees?Both that seem to be plenty of now have disappeared in massive numbers.And who knows if they will ever recover.
In N.H.,Tony.

 

[bemba]

Let me try to explain it.You breed a red golden to an Amherst,their offspring are 50/50.In order to breed back to pure birds you breed the hens back to the father which gives you a 75/25.You take the hens from that batch breed to original male this gives you a 87 1/2/12 1/2 breed that hens from that batch back to original male gives you a 93 3/4/6 1/4 repeat for 3 more generations and you will never get back 100% birds.I believe the % is 15/16 pure at the 7th year.This is called line breeding.Meanwhile all these birds you have hatched where do they go?Most people sell them as pure birds and that is where the gene pool goes to hell.So if a hen lays 12 eggs per clutch and most people pull eggs so the hen lays more so I will use 20 eggs as an easier number to work with.Now just saying all 20 eggs hatch(we knowq that doesn't happen)you end up with 10ales and 10 females(and we know this never happens.Now those hens will produce 200 eggs between the 10 of them for the next season.So there's 200 birds contaminated just that first year.Now the 200 birds produce 4000 contaminated chicks the next season.Yes just 2 years and 4000 birds.It doesn't take long.Now remember this started with a pair of birds.Now imagine if 50 people decided to do this that's 20000 birds in 2 years.And again it all started with 2 birds.
The cheer pheasant was close to extinction a few years back and between avriculturist,scientist,sportsmen and wildlife officers.politicians(believe it or not)and educators collected eggs from 25 breeding pairs hatched the eggs and introduced the chicks back into the wild.Helping save the cheer pheasant.This is what we as stewards to these birds should be thinking of saving them in pure form not destroying them.
I think I have explained correctly,but if I haven't please someone step in and explain.
Has anyone seen bats this year?How about honeybees?Both that seem to be plenty of now have disappeared in massive numbers.And who knows if they will ever recover.
In N.H.,Tony.

To start with Golden x Amherst is one of the crosses that produce fertile young..... Chickens cross ringneck pheasants are 99% infertile! And if there were a rare fertile bird it's offspring would be infertile anyway! So the line stops with them! It has been said several times already not sure why you can't understand? or choose to ignore it? ( no disrespect intended) Also first cross is 50 50, second is 3/4ths, third is 7/8ths, and forth is 15/16ths. Line breeding is when related birds are mated together, fancy term for inbreeding. Look I think it's fantastic that you are so dedicated to your birds! We need people to be to keep them going, but in this case I think what you are trying to explain is fairly irrelevant.

 

[RedBaron]

Quote:
You are wasting your time trying to explain anything to this individual. I've seen where he's hijacked other threads and completely shut down any logical conversation on the subject. All he does is spout this "7 generations" crap, and no amount of reasoning will make him understand that it is not even applicable in this situation. He seems to want attention, so don't give him anymore and maybe he'll GO AWAY! If he is so concerned about hybridizing, then maybe he should start his own thread on the evils of hybrid birds.

 

[jammyjammy2112]

Actually tony i have seen LOOAAADDDS of bats here in ireland.You could be driving you'r car next thing loadds of bats would be flying over your ligths at nigth.Honey bees generally dont come out till august and i have seen alot allready.

 

[chooks4life]

Let me try to explain it.You breed a red golden to an Amherst,their offspring are 50/50.In order to breed back to pure birds you breed the hens back to the father which gives you a 75/25.You take the hens from that batch breed to original male this gives you a 87 1/2/12 1/2 breed that hens from that batch back to original male gives you a 93 3/4/6 1/4 repeat for 3 more generations and you will never get back 100% birds.I believe the % is 15/16 pure at the 7th year.This is called line breeding.Meanwhile all these birds you have hatched where do they go?Most people sell them as pure birds and that is where the gene pool goes to hell.So if a hen lays 12 eggs per clutch and most people pull eggs so the hen lays more so I will use 20 eggs as an easier number to work with.Now just saying all 20 eggs hatch(we knowq that doesn't happen)you end up with 10ales and 10 females(and we know this never happens.Now those hens will produce 200 eggs between the 10 of them for the next season.So there's 200 birds contaminated just that first year.Now the 200 birds produce 4000 contaminated chicks the next season.Yes just 2 years and 4000 birds.It doesn't take long.Now remember this started with a pair of birds.Now imagine if 50 people decided to do this that's 20000 birds in 2 years.And again it all started with 2 birds.

I know what linebreeding is, etc but we're on the topic of how breeding one female pheasant with one rooster takes away 7 generations of pheasants. So the mechanics of diluting one type of pheasant with another type, then trying to breed back to pure types, is irrelevant here.

Also you used a lot of example stats which you say 'never happen', then use these inflated stats at the end of your explanation as a measurement of the magnitude of the issue, so that blows your example all out of proportion.

Has anyone seen bats this year? How about honeybees? Both that seem to be plenty of now have disappeared in massive numbers. And who knows if they will ever recover.

I live in Australia so I'm sure my experiences there are different to yours. Yes, I've seen bats and bees this year. I just moved off a property that housed some 350,000 fruit bats of three or four species in just a few acres of forest. There were bees there and there are bees here. But while honeybees have taken a population hit, Australia has many species of other bee types and ideally we would start domesticating and cultivating these.