FINCHforum

I went to buy some birds last week and saw that the chap had 3 canary hens for sale. He said that the canaries were English canaries. I wanted to buy one but worried about getting a cock. At the local petshop, they have Fife cocks for sale. To my untrained eye, they look exactly the same. I also doubt that an English canary is a type of canary. Maybe it is a mix of Gloster and something else. It definitely doesn't have Yorkshire in it. Can I put a Fife cock to an English hen?

MariusStegmann
Hi Marius
You know I honestly don't know if there is such a creature as an "English" canary, although I have heared the term used. The Canaries that are English, as in the types that were bred in England originally, are: Gloster, Lancashire, Norwich, Border and Stafford with a few other variants. You can look up their pictures on line and see if they resemble the hens you saw at the shop.
The Fife, if I remember right is an Australian concoction.
As to what you might get if you cross bred, who knows. Maybe you could come up with the original South African Stegmann Canary.

You can pair just about any type or variety of canary together as long as they get along. The only thing you need to be careful about, is if the hen is considerably smaller than the male, you may run into problems when she goes to pass an egg. Bob

Thx, I think the female is definately a bit bigger than the male. The female resembles a Stafford canary. I was told that the Fife canary is the smallest around.

MariusStegmann
So get your boy a nice big girl, Marius. Make him a happy boy. He will take one look, and say: WOW!

Yeah, some guys likes a bit extra. At least she will be able to cover up more eggs. Will do.

MariusStegmann

I have a question. Why would the genetics of the cock affect the size of the egg? One would think that is something entirely controlled by the genetics of the hen (and hens can lay eggs even without cocks). In fact, I can't think of a mechanism by which the genes in the sperm can dictate anything about the egg. Sure it will affect the size of the bird that develops from it. But the egg?

I was wondering the same thing. My male Java is a lot larger than the female & I keep them separated. I don't want to breed them, but know they will if they are together. I thought maybe the egg would be larger to support the larger developing chick from a bigger male. Didn't want her to become eggbound. Can anyone explain how this works?