FINCHforum

Sorry to blow this up.
I am just curious. I have seen finches and canaries being inner bred together on videos by some breeders. Is this done for color and looks? What purpose will this serve. Will the canaries that breed with finches always carry the finch DNA and have a finch as part of their clutch randomly, does this lower the quality of the canary and or the finch's that come from the clutch. Can some one give me a crash course on this.

Most of the canary crosses you see are sterile hybrids. These crossed are usually done for song.

Sometimes a species is closely related and they can produce a fertile hybrid. This has happened with the siskin x canary crosses that produced new colors such as the red factor and the jaspe canary.

There are eight members of the Serinus family that are genetically close enough to produce a percentage of fertile males in the first cross:

Red-fronted serin, Serinus pusillus
European serin, Serinus serinus
Syrian serin, Serinus syriacus
Atlantic canary, Serinus canaria
Cape canary, Serinus canicollis
Yellow-crowned canary, Serinus flavivertex
Ethiopian siskin, Serinus nigriceps
Black-headed canary, Serinus alario