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Recently I've been hearing a lot of breeders are crossing Alexs with IRN's in order to get Alex colour sports. I have a spare blue IRN hen, and was considering what I want to pair her off with. Has anyone here had any experience with putting these two together? What are the genetics? As in, does the cock need to be the IRN for you to get the various colours? I know a lot of people frown upon cross breeding. And I can see that point of view. So, don't answer if ya just want to tell me not to. At this point I am just curious and want to know how it works and will decide for myself if it's something I want to do.

I put my birds into a flight cage for some excercise. One of the Alex males has fallen in love with a creamino Ringneck hen. I don't have the birds to mate them up properly so I'll probably see what happens. Any resulting babies will be splits. A quicker way to get color would be to use a grey Ringneck as this color is dominant.

Ya, I can say I'm one of those people who are against hybridization, especially to create a mutation in a particular species. I'd rather have a natural mutation than a hybridized one, because you never know what problems may arise when hybridizing two species. I also believe there may be a higher chance of health problems in hybrids rather than pure species, but then that would depend on how close the parent species are.

With that aside, the best way, IMO, to produce "mutation" alexandrians (going from a hybrid point of view) would be to either breed an alex to a dominant color IRN or have two hybrid pairs (recessive mutatin IRN x Alex --- x2). You'll get green offspring from both pairs who are split for the mutation, and then you can breed the resulting clutches from each pair together, and have a chance of producing visual colored offspring. If you ensure to breed various pure alex's into the hybrid offspring, you'll get chicks who look more and more like pures rather than hybrids, yet still have the possibility to throw mutations.

Breeding hybrids together to produce a mutation in another species isn't unheard of... as supposedly some lovebird mutations came about via hybridization (I believe it's in the black masked lovebirds, but could be wrong), and I've heard reports that the red factor sun conure is the result of hybridizing with jendays and then breeding red intense birds together.

Here's a good article on the subject!
Mutations In The Alexandrine Parrot <--- Breeder of Hybrid Alex Mutations
IRN Mutations <--- Also A Breeder of Hybrid Alex Mutations

Thank you very much for the info and the link to a very informative article!

You might do a web search on psittacula hybrids.
Your babies will be split to blue, but the female babies might not be fertile,
which means that you will need to breed back to a blue ringneck hen to produce
1/4 Alex blue hybrids...which would make them rather small .
You would end up with a long-term breeding project, and a lot of "useless"
birds.

Thanks for the additional info Alhee! "Long term" isn't a problem. After all, most of our birds have life spans from 25 years and up. I certainly respect the opinion of those who oppose hybrids. I used to be one myself. And I would never consider cross breeding between two entirely different species. (Apparently IRNs crossbreed readily with Princess Parrots).....but to me Alexs are just rather large Ringnecks as it is. I don't think any chick would be considered useless. Asiatics are very popular as pets here, so any offspring that we don't intend to use in the breeding program will be handraised and sold as companion birds. Practically speaking, we love our birds more than anything. They bring the both of us more pleasure than anything else we do in our "spare" time. But, we have to consider the costs and try and breed a few more pricey birds to offset the expenses a bit. Once we get the results of a few DNA samples back we will probably pair off one of our blue IRN boys with an Alex girl that we met yesterday. She's semi tame, and comes from one of the best breeders in the state.

Patti In Oz wrote:(Apparently IRNs crossbreed readily with Princess Parrots)

I'd be interested to know more about this... I have not heard of IRNs hybridizing with Princess Parrots (however I have heard Princess x Scarlet Chested Keet)

Hi,

I just want to say I seen this and I really hope you decided against it. This is a very bad idea and there is nothing to benefit from it. There are people that are doing this but in my option it's a waste of time. The birds will never be the size and quality of the real Alexandrines, no matter what anyone say's. There are people that say after so many generations you can't tell but you can tell trust me. There are some real birds in the US and not once have I ever seen a hybrid that comes close in appearance. The true Alexandrines are very expensive, but hybridizing to get them come on.

(The old saying goes if your not going to do it right don't do it at all.) Thanks

MFIDS...sorry I didn't see your post til just now. I've read about this cross in several articles. I'll have to do some back tracking to find them again. I read a lot of avicultural related stuff, so it may take a while.

Birdlover62...I have to respectfully agree to disagree. What totally sold me on this cross breed was seeing a Lutino 15/16 Alexandrina in person. She was absolutely stunning. The red wing patches just leap out of that beautiful yellow!!! I am an extremely responsible bird keeper and would never pair off related birds, or add inbred birds to my collection. So I am confidant that we won't be compromising the health of our crosses.