Poultry Talk Ontario (pto.ca)

Alright folks, need some turkey experts to give me a hand here.
This is my third? second? year with turkeys.

I have a mostly pure Royal Palm. I say mostly, because he has a wee bit of pencilling, I am 100% sure he's heterozygous for it.
Otherwise he's pretty good, no brown or red....just black and white.

The girl i have is from Royal Palm breeding stock, but her bands are much lighter, so i am inclined to think she is either lavender or slate blue Palm.

so.....my plan was if she is slate blue then breeding to Royal Palm should give me 50% slate blue palm kids, and 50% Royal palm kids. If she is lavender (self blue) then i should get 100% blue palm back.

I have hatched a bunch of kids now, and am thinking they are probably all blue palm.....wondering what you guys all think. These guys are all 4 weeks (almost 5) weeks old now. only one of the boys seems to really have black on his wings coming in, and it does seem black as opposed to blue BUT....Bayvistafarm has pure royal palm kids hatched 1 day before mine, and they have WAY more black on them.....hence my question. I know i'll find out for sure next year when i breed these kids-if they are blue then i should get slate blue and royal and lavender back. but of course that's a whole year away and i think the love of feathered things is genetically linked to the impatient gene.
All the girls look like the one girl in the photo...there are 3 of them....they have absolutely nothing in the way of black that i can see anywhere.

boy 1: boy 2 (strutting already!): boy 3 (left) and girl 1 (right): boy 4 (also strutting up a storm):

I know nothing about turkeys, but Porter's has this turkey calculator that might help:
http://www.porterturkeys.com/turkeycolorcalculator.htm

its always so cute to see such young jakes strutting! i dont have a clue at all LOL but they look like nice healthy poults to me!

p.s.... Im glad my turkeys are only white haha

Robbie wrote:QR_BBPOST I know nothing about turkeys, but Porter's has this turkey calculator that might help:
http://www.porterturkeys.com/turkeycolorcalculator.htm

Thanks Robbie!! i think i've been "surfing" their site for the last-wow, 2 hours! Thank goodness porters has a great site! lots of pictures of the turkeys and poults too, i just looked across the top of my browser and i had 8 tabs, 2 for PTO, and 6 for porters pages LOL. unfortunately they don't have photos for the blue or lavender poults, so i'm not sure what to expect other than yellow fuzzies with or without a stripe on the back LOL. all these guys were yellow as yellow could be. no stripes.

From my limited experience, that's the fun of turkeys-you start off with a bunch of yellow poults, sometimes with a bit of colour and have to wait until they grow out to see the results!
But it is fun trying to guess!!

Ha! Ha! Love the little Turkey strutting, guessing the colour will be fun, I'm guessing blue palm.
Not a turkey expert, I've only had Beltsville small whites, and they are all white. Ha! Ha!

If they are blue then the next generation should give me lavender, slate blue and royal back-that would be neat. kinda like that whole blue/black/splash thing with chickens, just lavender/slate blue/royal in turkeys LOL. no splash that i know of.....guess we'll just have to wait a while to find out...(i hate waiting!!! LOL, no patience!!!) wonder how many turkeys i can pack into a 10 x 16 foot stall...i have 3 stalls that size, and one 16x26 stall....2 horses don't need 2 stalls do they? LOL. i gotta get the outside pens built...so the turkeys can get outside too.

Hi WLLady on the livestock conservancy web site https://livestockconservancy.org/index. ... key-manual you can dowload two interesting book about the heritage turkey. About the indoor turkey pen they recommand 3-5 square feet per birds. Also about the result of crossing Royal Palm and blue turkeys you can visit on facebook the page Turkey Color Genetics 101 Kevin Porter start this page, if you have any interogation about the result many persons can help you.

Thanks! I'm probably going to be joining the livestock conservancy once i figure out exactly what i have here-i want to make sure the genetics are correct before doing that-i do like "knowing" what i have LOL. sometimes it takes a couple generations....

So the kids are definitely not coming in black. not yet anyways, and i would be surprised if they darken much. so i think they're all blue slate, which means mom is lavender palm. dad is royal (with a bit of pencilling, so not pure), i have one poult with some pencilling showing up, but definitely darker than lavender and lighter than black. Most of the others (that i can catch anyways) have no pencilling yet....again, darker than mom but way lighter than dad....

i have a bunch more in the incubator hatching today, 3 already hatched, all are yellow LOL.