Albino Midget White

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chicken danz

chicken danz

Crowing
12 Years
May 20, 2010
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404
361
Waverly
I have two young groups of midget white turkeys. One of the younger group about 10 weeks old is much smaller than all the others. Today when I was moving them to a larger pen I noticed she is albino. All the others have blue eyes. Hers are red. I've either had her in the house or in the brooder house up until today. Now I'm wondering if it is safe to move her outside with the others. Or will the light be too intense for her red eyes. Does this albinoism happen often?
 
Albinism does sometimes occur, but it is not common. It does not always result in negatively affecting the stamina or any other trait of the birds, but when it does, as seems to be the case with your bird, it is not worth keeping. I would cull that bird.
 
why cull the bird, just learning here
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Why not just keep it as a strange pet?

Sometimes they are smaller as they can not see as well to find the food and water. They have much reduced vision and can not spot food as quickly as the other birds.

It should be OK outside as long as you provided shaded areas (something that you should do for the normal turkey also). The albino one will stay under the shade as the light will hurt its eyes - so perhaps provide the food and water in the shade part of the run.

Love to see a photo of your albino turkey. I have a thing for albino animals and used to have a small collection of albino pets - rats, snakes, rabbit, guinea pig and hamster. Also an albino budgie. I always wanted an albino chicken - but I don't think true albino chickens exist (with red eyes and no pigment in the feet).

Good luck with yours whatever you decided to do. If you eat it there will be no dark meat!!!!!
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jak2002003 said:
Why not just keep it as a strange pet?

Sometimes they are smaller as they can not see as well to find the food and water. They have much reduced vision and can not spot food as quickly as the other birds.

It should be OK outside as long as you provided shaded areas (something that you should do for the normal turkey also). The albino one will stay under the shade as the light will hurt its eyes - so perhaps provide the food and water in the shade part of the run.

Love to see a photo of your albino turkey. I have a thing for albino animals and used to have a small collection of albino pets - rats, snakes, rabbit, guinea pig and hamster. Also an albino budgie. I always wanted an albino chicken - but I don't think true albino chickens exist (with red eyes and no pigment in the feet).

Good luck with yours whatever you decided to do. If you eat it there will be no dark meat!!!!!
lau.gif
Click to expand...
A strange pet that will live a miserable life by never being completely healthy, never being able to see well enough to eat all that it should? That's wrong on humane grounds alone.

Albinism and other pigment anomalies affect only the color of the skin and/or hair or feathers. By your way of thinking, Black turkeys should have black meat, Bourbon Reds, red meat, etc, but that's just not the way it works.
 
It's a Midget White. It's supposed to be small. The smaller Midget Whites aren't culls, they are the breeding stock.

There is no reason to cull her unless she is showing signs of ill health or pain.

Lots of albino animals have no issues with their eye sight. It's not the color of the iris that is doing the seeing, it is the light receptors in the pupil.

The only issues I've ever seen with albino animals (rats, ferrets, horses) is that the unpigmented skin sunburns easily. So exposed skin, mostly around the eyes might need some protection. I'd keep an eye on her neck, watching for sunburn. But if she has access to shade, she might be OK.
 
You have a point, but being noticeably smaller, as in how it was worded, tends to mean sickly, not naturally smaller as a Midget should, compared to other breeds.
Agreed too on the albinism issue. Many people mistakenly assume that all or many albinos are inherently sickly. This is not true in all species, but it is in some, or at least the albinos that have occurred so far in those species have been linked with detrimental or fatal genes.
 

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