Turkey poults - wierd things happening

Mistwood Poultry · **Joined:** Wed Sep 16, 2009 8:08 am **Posts:** 46

Wierd thing 1: i have recently been hatching turkey poults like there's no tomorrow and have had heeps of success. i have just hatched a small bronze turkey, but here's the catch..... I DON'T OWN ANY BRONZE TURKEYS!!!shock horror moment....

I have 1 buff and the rest are white - one of which has a random bronze feather
here are my possible reasonings....

1. some sicko with too much time on his hands decided to come in while i was not looking and artificialy insemonate one of my hens...ewe

2. buff hens can randomly give off bronze

3. (most likely) my tom with the random bronze feather has bronze in his family tree (which i have been told is most definately the case) and gives off a bronze poult every hundred birds or more.

so come on, help a brother and pick a solution......

Wierd thing 2:

I was planing on taking my poults to the markets and was hoping to keep all the buff. if anyone can tell me if there is a way that i can tell buff from white turkey dayolds i would really love to know...

THANKS><

Mistwood Poultry · **Joined:** Wed Sep 16, 2009 8:08 am **Posts:** 46

btw: don't you think that sounds like a maths exam question from grade 6 or something.... "if simon has 6 white turkeys and hatches one bronze turkey, how could this be? "

A. White turkey + Buff turkey = bronze!

i wish it were that simple

MariaCreeksPoultry · **Posted:** Wed Jul 21, 2010 7:12 pm

If your white turkey is a dominant white genetically it may be hiding recessive bronze genes in there. We had a white hen that used to hatch bronze chicks (father was palm). We got rid of her as we find bronzes are a bit crazy.

Alternately........does anyone else in your street have turkeys? When we lived down the road from people with turkeys, the our hens would sometimes sneak down the road for a bit onthe side....or our neighbours hens would sneak up to our place.

And I have not worked out how to tell a buff chick from a white chick until they are a couple of months old.

Stt · **Joined:** Sun Aug 19, 2007 7:01 pm **Posts:** 3006

Do you really think its number one?

oozcorpse · **Joined:** Sun Nov 04, 2007 8:15 am **Posts:** 2715

Mistwood Poultry wrote:

btw: don't you think that sounds like a maths exam question from grade 6 or something.... "if simon has 6 white turkeys and hatches one bronze turkey, how could this be? "

A. White turkey + Buff turkey = bronze!

i wish it were that simple

Well I work on the theory “I’m not smarter than a fifth grader” :oops:

Soooo- yeah there is Bronze in there somewhere – our Meat birds throw them every now and then – baring in mind our Meat are White with BLUE eyes and/or RP looking

# OH!! and turkey hens are total trollops and will walk KILOMETRES there and back to rendevous with a handsome gobbler - the gobblers arent much better :roll:

andre · **Joined:** Tue Oct 13, 2009 5:21 pm **Posts:** 612

White colour in turkeys is recessive. Generally white turkeys are homozygous white on a bronze background ~ so they are white to look at [if they have blue eyes like Sooz's then they are made on a black background].

Bronze colour is generally dominant to other colours.

So its not surprising that you've recovered a bronze from a buff x white mating. This poult will be split for recessive white.

oozcorpse · **Joined:** Sun Nov 04, 2007 8:15 am **Posts:** 2715

andrewschooks wrote:

White colour in turkeys is recessive. [if they have blue eyes like Sooz's then they are made on a black background].

you've been doing yr homework :-D

- yep blue eyed whites are exactly as you say - I get predominantely RP looking and blue eyed White poults with the occassional bronzish looking one thrown in for good measure - the bronzish always from the RP looking ones never the white - got a weird white/black thing last season tho - was butt ugly marking wise!!

BTW - none have started laying again yet either - tis freezing still tho!

andre · **Joined:** Tue Oct 13, 2009 5:21 pm **Posts:** 612

The Royal Palms are made on a black-wing bronze background.

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