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Can two different breeds have babies?!

Mikalalee

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Mikala lee
Please help!
I found this website when I typed in "Conure Quaker hybrid" and turns out the guy that posted it did it as an April fool's joke so not very helpful..
Well I have a female green cheeked conure and a male Quaker and the female has laid 5 eggs! It's been close to two weeks since this has happened. I held a couple of the eggs to candlelight to see if there was anything in there and there's definitely a yellow color in there. Is it possible that these could hatch? If not should I take them away or wait awhile? If so would they incubate just from the mother tending to them or would I have to put them in an incubator? Or is it too late? The mother has been tending to them very well she found a place to nest away from the cage underneath my stairway, I put a box and a towel down there and she chewed em right up and made a nest out of them and huddled the eggs right in. She spends 90% of her time in there only coming out to eat loads of food and take the most massive poops I've ever seen.. can't believe that much can come out of one little booty. And every now and again when she's in her nest I can hear her moving the eggs around and if you go in there to peek she turns into a terrifying hell bird ... Sooo any advice would be extremely helpful.
Thank you so much!!
-Mikala
 

Tazlima

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Ok, there are two parts to this question.

1) Are the eggs viable?
Short answer is "no." Quakers and conures can't have babies together.

Now, IF you just got the GCC very, very recently, as in, a week or two before the eggs were laid, and she was housed with a male GCC at that time, there's a slight chance they're fertilized. Otherwise... nope.

Female birds can lay eggs, even if they've never ever been around a male bird. However, those eggs won't be fertilized and therefore won't develop into chicks. The chicken eggs at the grocery store are almost always unfertilized.

Candling is tricky to read if you haven't done it before, but basically, you know how if you stick a flashlight in your mouth and puff out your cheeks, it will make your cheeks glow a little bit? Sort of like a christmas light? When you candle an egg, if it's empty, it will glow like that, although the color of the shell will influence how much it glows. That's because the albumen and yolk let light pass through. If there's a chick, the chick will block the light and the egg will be totally dark.


2) How to handle the situation with the mother bird?

I'm far more familiar with poultry than psittacines, so I'm not sure how best to handle the behavior - whether it's better to give her dummy eggs or just take them away. I'll let someone with more knowledge answer that part.
 

Mikalalee

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Thanks so much for taking the time to respond @Tazlima ! I'm with you I'm an experienced chicken mother but know little about parrots breeding behavior.
I know they lay with or without a mate, I once had a duck bond to a ceramic duck and started laying eggs..lol
And I've had my conure for 4 years, I got her at around 6 months old and this is her first clutch.
Thanks again!
 

Fuzzy

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Who knows - there was once someone here who had a B&G Macaw/Patagonian Conure hybrid.
 

Tazlima

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Thanks so much for taking the time to respond @Tazlima ! I'm with you I'm an experienced chicken mother but know little about parrots breeding behavior.
I know they lay with or without a mate, I once had a duck bond to a ceramic duck and started laying eggs..lol
And I've had my conure for 4 years, I got her at around 6 months old and this is her first clutch.
Thanks again!
Oops! I apologize for the explanation about the fertilization of the eggs. I wasn't sure how experienced you were with birds and I meet a surprising number of people in real life who don't know the info in my post (heck - I only learned how to candle eggs a couple years ago myself), so I sort of went with my base-line explanation as a starting point. Thanks for being a good sport!

Dang. Now I'm wondering if I'm wrong and conures and quakers CAN produce offspring. I've never heard of it, but maybe it's like ligers or coywolves or camas... uncommon but not impossible. I'm trying to figure out if they have the same number of chromosomes, but I'm not having much luck.
 
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Serin

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This hybrid has never been documented, and is very unlikely to be viable. If the eggs were fertile, by now you would see red veins in the eggs. Yellow color means it is infertile, and only holds a yolk, with no embryo.

Let the mother sit until she gets bored, or for four weeks - whichever comes first.
 

Hawk12237

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Please help!
I found this website when I typed in "Conure Quaker hybrid" and turns out the guy that posted it did it as an April fool's joke so not very helpful..
Well I have a female green cheeked conure and a male Quaker and the female has laid 5 eggs! It's been close to two weeks since this has happened. I held a couple of the eggs to candlelight to see if there was anything in there and there's definitely a yellow color in there. Is it possible that these could hatch? If not should I take them away or wait awhile? If so would they incubate just from the mother tending to them or would I have to put them in an incubator? Or is it too late? The mother has been tending to them very well she found a place to nest away from the cage underneath my stairway, I put a box and a towel down there and she chewed em right up and made a nest out of them and huddled the eggs right in. She spends 90% of her time in there only coming out to eat loads of food and take the most massive poops I've ever seen.. can't believe that much can come out of one little booty. And every now and again when she's in her nest I can hear her moving the eggs around and if you go in there to peek she turns into a terrifying HE double hockey sticks bird ... Sooo any advice would be extremely helpful.
Thank you so much!!
-Mikala
First of all, that web site has circulated a hoax going back about 5 years...even has photo shopped pics. The answer, NO..... DNA won't allow it. But I'm scratching my head that you say you have eggs. That said, my Zon is female and my grey male, my Zon laid a couple eggs. Shortly after I rescued her. But they never hatched. And a grey and a blue front.......lol.......not.
 

jmfleish

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I can see how you might get a hybrid from a Conure and a Macaw...they are incredibly closely related. A Conure and a Quaker...not so much...
 

Monica

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Who knows - there was once someone here who had a B&G Macaw/Patagonian Conure hybrid.
This hybrid hasn't been confirmed. Could be BTM x Patagonian, BTM x Military, B&G x Military, etc...

Although, my bet is that he *IS* a Patagonian x something hybrid since there's been no other birds like him. There are BTM x Military hybrids and they don't look like the possible Patagonian hybrid.


I can see how you might get a hybrid from a Conure and a Macaw...they are incredibly closely related. A Conure and a Quaker...not so much...
We already have the following hybrids...

Sun x Hahns
Jenday x Hahns
Sun x Hahns x Jenday (possibly)
Nanday x Hahns
Mitred x Noble
Nanday x Illigers

Of the ones I can think of.




Still waiting to hear of a quaker hybrid. There are some weird and wacky hybrids out there, such as king parrot x rainbow lorikeet, TAG x jardines, BFA x mitred conure or even a peach front(?) x white bellied caique hybrids... but no confirmed quaker hybrids.
 

simon777

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I'm no expert at all but you may find you end up with 'mules'. A cross but sterile. Personally I'd say see what happens. If she is happy tending her eggs why upset her by taking them away.
 

Monica

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I'm no expert at all but you may find you end up with 'mules'. A cross but sterile. Personally I'd say see what happens. If she is happy tending her eggs why upset her by taking them away.
Most hybrids are fertile... very few end up infertile/mules.

If a quaker x conure hybrid were possible, it would probably be infertile... but I've seen stranger things!
 
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