Bengalese X Shafttail Hybrids

These chicks were an accident. I do not intentionally breed hybrids. However, they are interesting and so I'd like to share them. The foster father was a imperfect self (marked) Bonten Pearl (with no Euro influence) and his hen was a Pearl (again no Euro influence). She had a liason with a Creamino Shafttail male that I didn't have a mate for at the time. There were five eggs laid. All were fertile. I dropped one Creamino egg the day before she was ready to hatch, killing her. :-( The other four eggs hatched out. The Pearls didn't feed the creaminos very well and I ended up handfeeding them. It took them a very long time to fledge (almost five weeks) but they weaned almost overnight so in the end it was about the same amount of time I'd expect to feed any chick - about six weeks total.

The hybrids are HUGE compared to either societies or shafttails. TLC, my personal favorite and of course one of the Creamino hens, has cataracts in her left eye. The smaller of the two normal males developed some sort of neurological distress and died on September 6th, 2005. That was sad to watch and even sadder to say good bye.