Breeding??????

Question
We have a quaker parrot and a sun conure in same cage and we have noticed the quaker trying to breed with our sun conure! Can it be that they are really trying to mate is this posible? Could they just be real friendly. We are so confuised on this matter we was told they would never cross breed. PLEASE HELP!


                       JEFF

Answer
Hi, Jeff.  Thanks for posting.

I'm not going to say it's impossible for these 2 different species to breed/mate, but you should not let this happen.  Perhaps they are just going through the motions because of raging hormones (it's breeding season)...just being "overly friendly" with each other!  Cross-breeding (or hybridization) does occur, but usually in subspecies of birds.  In other words, someone might breed a blue front amazon with an orange wing amazon (subspecies of amazons), but you wouldn't see a blue front amazon mated to an african grey (2 different species).  These 2 latter species are just too different biologically.  Hybridization results in contamination of a gene pool and highly frowned upon.

If one of your birds is a female, she might lay an egg because of raging hormones, but this egg would most likely be infertile (females can lay infertile eggs without mating when hormones run rampant).  

Come back if necessary.

Chrys