Turkey Color Genetics Lessons - Page 2

I've never raised Jersey Buffs, but they seem simple enough.  Porters Heritage Turkeys has a brief history of how they were developed.  Genetically, they are like bourbon reds, but they are black-based instead of bronze-based.  SInce they are homozygous at both locations BBrr, they will always breed true, so your hen and tom should just throw Jersey Buffs and you shouldn't have any problems.

No doubt Kevin Porter knows way more than me about turkey genetics.  I am still learning as I go.  As to my background, I have a B.S. and M.S. in Wildlife Biology from the University of Montana.  That is where I learned basic genetics.  I used Porters site to find out what the genotypes were for different colors (strains, breeds,varieties) of turkeys.  I've also read a little in books about turkey genetics.  I never really understood how the sex-linking in fowl worked until I found this fun site.  I think I got it now.  I have also played around a little with breeding my own birds.  Some of my favorite colored birds are those with wing coverts that contrast with the rest of the wing, like Porter's Golden Phoenix and Red Phoenix.  Since I live in Minnesota, I can't buy from small places like Porter's, so I can't order the birds I want, so I have to figure out how to breed for them.  (I'm breeding two pairs this spring.  One pair has a one in eight chance of throwing golden phoenix, the other pair has 1 in 8 for the hens but only 1 in 16 for the toms).

So the final answer is I learned genetics in college, and learned about turkey specifics by reading and doing.  While I am not the world's foremost expert on turkey genetics by any means, it seemed obvious from some of the questions and comments that many people have never studied genetics and are crossing birds without knowing what to expect.  I hoped these short discussions would help some of them out. 

One last comment...you may have noticed that I have only talked about a few colors of turkeys.  That's because these are colors I've played with myself.  For example, I don't want to get into the blues because there are lots of ways to make blue turkeys with different bases and whether or not they are homozygous or heterozygous.  There was recenlty a very vigorous discussion of what makes a lavendar, for example.  Since I don't raise these, I thought it best to just stay out of it.