BREEDING TURKEYS - Standard Bronze With Broad Breasted Bronze

[StevenSRitchie]

BREEDING TURKEYS - Standard Bronze With Broad Breasted Bronze?
QUESTION: I know a Broad Breasted Bronze Turkey cannot mate naturally because they have been bred to be so large over the years that they need to be artificially inseminated. Broad breasted turkeys are so broad and so large that the male Turkeys (Tom's) cannot mount and mate with fhe female hens. Therefore they must be artificially inseminated. But what if I bred a Broad Breasted Bronze Turkey hen with my largest Standard Bronze Tom? Since Standard Bronze males (Tom's) are also very large they should easily be able to mount and mate with a Broad Breasted Bronze female (hen). I'm thinking about breeding the hybrid Turkey hen which will be half Broad Breasted and half Standard Breasted the following year for a second generation breeding with another Standard Bronze Tom (male) to produce a larger and broader Standard Bronze Heritage Turkey hybrid that should be able to mate and set on eggs like the regular Standard Bronze do. Does anyone think that would work? Has anyone ever tried this?

 

[Frosty]

I believe I have heard of people doing this but have never seen the results. I spoke with Kevin Porter on this subject, from what I gather you mostly have to watch that the offspring don't get too large or you defeat the purpose. I am not sure if you would want to use your largest tom for the breeding, as big as the BB hen will get I think I would worry adding that much weight to her back?

I do have a BBW hen in with my White Hollands to try breeding my own, something always seems to get in the way

This year is was a very wet spring and a building that collapsed under snow load last winter. I ended up with muddy eggs and I couldn't tell if they came from WH hens or the BBW (I wasn't able to separate the BB hen because the collapsed building was where I planned to put them).

If you try it, good luck and please post the results!