Can Pheasants and Chickens Mate?

If you’ve spent any amount of time looking into chickens, you probably already know there are a huge variety of domestic breeds out there. There are hundreds, in fact! But when you see all the different sizes, colors, body types, and behaviors it really makes for a remarkable variety among these common birds.

But what you might not have known is that each and every one of these chickens is itself descended from wild jungle fowl – mainly from red jungle fowl, Gallus gallus. That family tree gets pretty narrow at the bottom!

But chickens themselves also have “cousins” in the form of pheasants. In fact, they are close cousins, though an evolutionary biologist might disagree. So close that this begs the question: is it possible for pheasants and chickens to mate?

Yes, pheasants and chickens can mate successfully, but this pairing is unlikely to result in healthy chicks that would make it to adulthood. Hybrid birds that result from mating are plagued with abnormalities (particularly exencephaly) and they themselves are sterile.

It’s pretty surprising, in a way, when you consider how different pheasants and chickens look. Nonetheless, genetically they have many similarities. They are similar, but ultimately incompatible for practical purposes on the homestead, as we will learn.

In case you go no further, I warn you that you should not attempt to crossbreed pheasants and chickens, and I’ll tell you why you shouldn’t in detail below.

Why Would Anyone Try to Breed Chickens and Pheasants Together?

It’s hard to say exactly why someone would try to crossbreed pheasants and chickens, but undoubtedly such pairings have occurred in places where both birds are present and, of course, also as a result of direct human intervention.

But looking at the endeavor more scientifically, sometimes there’s no telling what good (or ill) will result from such a pairing.

Careful, specialized, and selective breeding of all kinds of domestic animals has led to the breeds we all know and love today, including the ones responsible for laying the vast majority of our eggs and supplying truly gargantuan amounts of meat.

Lots of good can result from careful breeding practices, including hybridizing, but far, far more often, the end result is completely non-viable for farmers. Sadly, the latter is the case when talking about pheasants and chickens.

Is it a Good Idea for Chickens and Pheasants to Mate?

No, it absolutely is not. Though both pheasants and chickens belong to the same family, Phasianidae, these pairings will mostly produce non-viable offspring. This 2011 experiment showed a 25.9% fertilization rate and a 36% hatchability, though it was done through artificial insemination. This other study reached an impressive fertility rate of over 50%!

Even more rarely than that will the chick survive to adulthood. Again, genetic similarity does not mean true genetic compatibility. So for a farmer or a homesteader who wants to maximize production and continue breeding the offspring, breeding the two is a terrible idea…

I will also note that the end result is improved depending on the pairing of either sex from each species: If a male pheasant mates with a female chicken, one study reached a 6% hatchability rate (of fertile eggs), but if a male pheasant mates with a female chicken, the hatchability rates were shown to be anywhere between 36% in this case and 42% if the math is correct…

Sure that’s a big difference, but not big enough for a homesteader. In fact, the only reason someone would engage in this sort of activity is if they didn’t know better or were acting irresponsibly.

What is the Resulting Chick Called?

There is no standardized name for a chicken-pheasant hybrid. The birds are called either “pheasants” or “chickens” at turns, or chicken–pheasant hybrids.

I mean, if you really want to, you could come up with a name for them that you prefer but as you will learn in the following sections, these birds are so rare and so addled by health problems, that they truly don’t have a special name.

Can Chicken-Pheasant Hybrids Reproduce?

No, because the offspring of both sexes are sterile. This is because the parents of such a bird have different numbers of chromosomes, plus they have other DNA-level differences.

To be clear, these hybrids can and will definitely lay eggs, assuming they make it to adulthood, but any bird that mates with them, be it chicken or pheasant, is very unlikely to fertilize the eggs. So the eggs do get laid, but fertilizing them is pretty much impossible.

Man Hybrid Eggs Don’t Survive, and When they Do, There are Major Issues

So just how unlikely is it for a chicken pheasant hybrid to reach adulthood? As I’ve said several times already it is very, very unlikely. But let’s look at the math and then you can decide for yourself.

For starters, about a third out of every 100 eggs that are fertilized will even develop properly enough to make it to hatching (this one study found a 36%). That’s it, and even if they do make it that far in the developmental process the outcome is far from certain. Of those eggs that develop far enough for hatching to even be possible, only some of them will be able to pip. And yes, I mean pip only, not completely exit the shell and survive.

It’s truly harrowing, but absolutely true. I’ll spare you the big lecture on the math because it’s been done and studied before. The bottom line is that out of every 1,000 fertilized eggs produced by the pairing of a pheasant and a chicken, of either sex, only 20 or so of their offspring will survive and develop into adulthood. That’s it.

This is a dreadful amount of death and malformation, and the chief reason why you should never, ever, by action or omission of action allow a pheasant and chicken to mate.

Chicken-Pheasant Hybrids are Not Remarkable in Any Practical Way

So, it speaks for itself that these hybrid birds are harder to obtain even under ideal conditions. There must be something really special about them then, yes? Sadly no, or perhaps thankfully no because that would lead more people to try to get them…

These hybrid birds look very much like a pheasant with plainer plumage and their size is somewhere between that of both species. They are totally unremarkable in all regards except for the fact that they tend to have a lot of developmental abnormalities.

Even these precious few hybrid birds that survive to adulthood are likely to be beset by all kinds of health problems and even with the best care, nutrition, and environment they do not live that long. What birds have been studied show vulnerability to all sorts of common poultry diseases and also genetic disease more broadly, including a host of physical deformities such as exencephaly.

Do Hybrid Eggs Taste Good or Bad?

The few people who have tried them report that the eggs laid by hybrid hens taste basically like any other chicken egg that you’ve had. So once again, this proves the assertion that there is nothing truly special about these poor, rare birds.

You’re not going to get some magical or incredibly delicious or nutritious egg out of them to justify the ceaseless toil and attempts needed to produce one. Don’t get any ideas!

It’s All an Exercise in Futility

Considering how excruciatingly difficult it is to successfully breed pheasants and chickens together and produce viable offspring, we can safely say that the whole notion is simply a non-starter on the homestead, and possibly unethical if you were to even try.

There is no way to make these birds economically viable for any purpose, even as a ghoulish sort of sideshow attraction. Sure, you might be able to get a little more meat per bird as they found here, but these few begotten animals that survive to adulthood will suffer through life besieged by all sorts of diseases.

While it is ultimately possible to produce such a hybrid, there is absolutely no reason to do so or even to attempt to do so.