Gamebird hybrids

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' (13/42.

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."

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.

They have also produced hybrids with peafowl, chachalacas, capercaillie, grouse, quail, curassows, pheasants and guans.

[13][14] The peafowl (Pavo cristatus) from Asia and the common guineafowl (Numida meleagris) from Africa have been crossed.

Harada & Buss[21] reported hybridisation experiments between Beltsville Small White Turkeys and two strains of chickens.

Duck-chicken chimera was prepared by transferring donor germ cells into embryo cavity of zygote.