AUSTRALIAN POULTRY FORUM™

OK...I have a Turkey Tom...called Tom he is a result of a Bronze and Bourbon Red...is he a solid "colour" or is he a SPLIT? I have a Bronze hen and several Sweetgrass hens and now a young Sweetgrass tom has joined the menagery.

To keep this big crazy boy, would it be best to get other hens for him and keep the sweetgrass totally seperate, and if reading things like bourbon reds AND bronzes are a bit feral compared to others wouldn't a single bird of both genetics mean he is completely...tempermental????? to put it nicely.

Not knowing anything about the genetics of turkey colours (I do breed australian parrots so understand sex-linked, recessive, dominant) can someone pls enlighten me???

I love these guys, they are characters and yes I have chooks too and have NEVER had a problem with blackhead or any other health issues...so easy to keep and tame down....hmmmm too much heehee

Speks

All I know abt Bourbon Reds is they are ferrel and I got rid of Arthur and Martha and their young quick smart once they started trampling anything and everything smaller than them then turned on the Maremma the cattle and us – maybe ours were just especially ferrel I don’t know but that was enough for me to get rid of them
No knowledge on Bronze so cant comment there

But personally I’d be keeping the ‘Sweetgrass’ separate

I keep my RPs separate to my Blacks and meat birds until I get poults then I mix them for the rest of the year to get food for the table.
Andrewschooks = really nice bloke by the way – is studying turkey genetics and will be able to help answer the genetic side of things – I can only answer the ‘ferrel’ side of things

Hi Soozorp

Yeh I know about the tramplin bit last year out of breeding season both my tom and his then current wife..bronze/red girl started tramplin my chooks, got a couple cornered and yeh got to bury them and I saved one of my golden spangled pullets from them only to have her permanently disabled, so she went to a friends place as a pet only. THey love her...hmmmm Maybe I need to get rid of my big Tom and the bronze girl and look at something else.

But I would still love to hear about the genetics of Turkeys...if I am to start breeding them, it is my responsibilty to learn abit about them I think

Thanks for that Sooz

Speks

Ok, this is what I think the geneotypes of the three breeds are:

Bronze = C+C+, b+b+, R+R+ ~ this is the wild type, the C locus confers presence or absence or colour in the feathers, the B locus affects the shade of black (for want of a better term) and the R locus the red shades. So for Bronze you have C+ which means wild type presence of colour, b+ is wild type bronze and R+ is wild type red pigment.

Bourbon Red = C+C+, b+b+, rr ~ the homozygous recessive r at this locus changes the bronze to a red colour.

Sweetgrass = cgcg, blbl, R+R+ ~ the cg at the colour locus confers an intermediate colouration between white and the wild type.

Your gobbler would be C+C+, b+b+, R+r ~ presumably he looks just like a Bronze but is split at the R locus.

Temperament is not (as far as I know) linked to any of these genes. Some breeds are definitely different in terms of temperament however. Personally, I'd be giving any crazy ones the chop!

If you were to mate the split Bronze gobbler to the sweetgrass hens then all the progeny would look bronze, but be split at a range of loci (you can work it out). To my mind that is a bit of a boring result unless there is something special about the gobbler.

i am putting pics in to show u what he looks like...to me his flight feathers are lighter then a typical bronze but it may have just been the pics I was looking at...but the barring as well on flights are NOT as defined as in normal bronze





well I hope that is right...plus I put 2 of the same pic but i did resize one so if it not appropriate to be putting in here I apologise up front now...I did follow size dimensions with them

Speks

Mmm I think he looks like a bronze. The experts will say that the r gene is not completely recessive, so you get a slight effect. Perhaps that is what you're seeing.