Which is the most self sufficient and yummy turkey breed?

[patandchickens]

Is there a stigma for mixing turkey breeds? people do it with chickens all the time.....

It's just that I've had that discussion already over on BYC last year or two

Also, to be fair, I think that a lot of heritage turkey breeds (oops, "varieties", there is another discussion I've had previously LOL) are, or have been until pretty recently, represented by only small populations compared to a lot of chicken breeds, thus it kind of *is* a loss to the breed to have someone lettin' em mix it up rather than keeping the breed pure and to-standard.

And it seems like a cross between the types would really be kind of better......I can see why one might want to have a more multipurpose bird.

I'm not sure there is really a lot of multipurposing to be done with turkeys? I mean, either they're for pretty or they're for meat. I suppose you could divide meat into "tasty" versus "lots of", but other than that, <shrug>

So pretty much any crossing you do is just mucking up both gene pools and giving you back chaos. Still EDIBLE chaos, of course, and sometimes PRETTY chaos, but nothing that will breed true or be as meatily-conformed as your original meat-type breed.

(Although, I would like it if I ended up with a sort of rainbow assortment of mutt turkeys, no two alike... but I don't think that's all that realistic genetically, certainly not for a few generations and probably not at ALL if I'm only going to carry over one tom and a couple-few hens each winter.)

Pat

 

[Farmfresh]

My thought on mutt turkeys as well as chickens is that some mutts can be beneficial to a flock. I have always liked the variety and color that mutt breeds possess and sometimes you end up with an exceptional individual as well.

 

[savingdogs]

I accidentely hatched a BO/RIR cross chicken and she is currently my biggest plumpest hen laying an egg a day and is my prettiest one, too. My little accident.

Can all turkey breeds co-mingle? It seems like there is quite a size difference, do you get a variety of offspring?

 

[Farmfresh]

They are all - even the wild ones - cut from the same cloth. They will all interbreed. IF they CAN breed of course. :/ Those extra fat Broad Breasted birds can not do the do at all.

 

[patandchickens]

According to the APA they are *not* breeds, they are just "varieties", like different colors within a chicken breed. Wyandottes are a breed and come in white, silver-laced, gold-laced, etcetera. Turkeys are ONE SINGLE breed, sez APA, and come in varieties such as midget white, royal palm, bourbon red, narragansett, standard bronze, etcetera.

<shrug>

They can certainly all interbreed, and really there is a lot less variation in body size among *turkeys* than among *chickens*.

It is commonly said that the commercial broadbreasted turkeys (white or bronze) cannot breed without AI, but as far as I can tell that is only true of the MALES. Perhaps because most commercial poultry folks are males, they tend to forget that FEMALES are half of the reproductive equation and as far as I know (have not done it myself) the FEMALES breed naturally just fine if covered by a tom of a normally-capable breed, although AFAIK broodiness has pretty much been bred out of the BB hens the same way it's been bred out of commercial chickens.

I would think that it'd take more food to carry BB hens over winter than for a smaller heritage breed... although I dunno, maybe not if you are choosing to restrict their intake to minimize leg/heart problems.

Pat

 

[meriruka]

Random BR pic..... Jerry & his kids.
http://www.sufficientself.com/forum/uploads/286_p1010048.jpg

Is that netting I see in the background there to keep your turks from flying? If so, tell us about your containment system.

The netting in the pic is over one of the chicken runs. I did have netting over the turkey run when the turkeys were small - I think more to keep things out (hawks & such) rather than keep the turkeys in. I took the netting down because I'm constantly having to move the fence to give them more grass. Out of all the turkeys I've had, only one would jump over the 6' fence and could never figure out how to jump back in. I gave her to a friend who has a predator free place for her to roam (and a tom to keep her company), all of the others are content to stay in the run. I'm always surprised when people talk about their turkeys flying around & hanging out in trees - mine just stay on the ground - I don't know why - but they can sure run fast!

The pic is my first hatch of poults first day outside, I tried putting the poults in the run but the hens picked on them constantly. I put them out in the yard and let Jerry out with them- he is a great dad - rounding them up when they strayed too far.
Jerry goes broody more often than the hens, I spent a lot of time washing smooshed egg off him because he's too heavy for that job.

 

[Ohioann]

Certainly turkeys can be cross bred between varieties. BUT if you are interested in preserving heritage turkeys remember that for every cross bred poult hatched that is a purebred that is lost. Also if your cross bred birds get out of the food producing chain and into the poult producing chain you are, as had been said before, producing "mutt" turkeys and if these "mutt" turkeys resemble the purebred phenotypically it will really confuse the issue.