page_title: Gamebird hybrids
section_title: Chicken hybrids
hierarchical_section_title: Gamebird hybrids / Chicken hybrids
caption_attribution_description: English: Own work. Two hybrids between chickens and the common pheasant, Rothschild Museum, Tring. Photo taken of specimens ant Rothschild Zoological Museum, Tring, England.
context_page_description: Gamebird hybrids are the result of crossing species of game birds, including ducks, with each other and with domestic poultry. These hybrid species may sometimes occur naturally in the wild or more commonly through the deliberate or inadvertent intervention of humans.
  Charles Darwin described hybrids of game birds and domestic fowl in The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication:
  Mr. Hewitt, who has had great experience in crossing tame cock-pheasants with fowls belonging to five breeds, gives as the character of all 'extraordinary wildness'; but I have myself seen one exception to this rule. Mr. S. J. Salter who raised a large number of hybrids from a bantam-hen by Gallus sonneratii, states that 'all were exceedingly wild.' [...] utterly sterile male hybrids from the pheasant and the fowl act in the same manner, "their delight being to watch when the hens leave their nests, and to take on themselves the office of a sitter." [...] Mr. Hewitt gives it as a general rule with fowls, that crossing the breed increases their size.
context_section_description: Charles Darwin mentioned crosses between domestic fowl and pheasants in Origin of Species 
  [...] from observations communicated to me by Mr. Hewitt, who has had great experience in hybridising pheasants and fowls
   and later in The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication (top of this page), where he mentioned effeminate behaviour in the male hybrids.
  In her book Bird Hybrids, A. P. Gray lists numerous crosses between chickens (Gallus gallus) and other types of fowl. Domestic fowl can be crossed, and produce fertile offspring, with silver pheasants, red junglefowl and green junglefowl. They have also produced hybrids with peafowl, chachalacas, capercaillie, grouse, quail, curassows, pheasants and guans.
  Domestic fowl have been crossed with guineafowl and also with common pheasant (Phasianus colchicus). Domestic fowl/pheasant hybrids have also occurred naturally. Domestic chickens and Japanese quail (Coturnix japonica) have been hybridised using artificial insemination.
  The peafowl (Pavo cristatus) from Asia and the common guineafowl (Numida meleagris) from Africa have been crossed.
caption: Two hybrids between chickens and the common pheasant, Rothschild Museum, Tring
exif: {}