My Bronze Hen and Tom gave us a white baby!

[Lagerdogger]

Both your hen and gobbler are showing one or more solid colored wing feathers, rather than all being barred. This is a good indicator that both birds harbor palm or possibly blackwing genes. With these genes, a small percentage of the poults from this mating could turn out to be a palm or variation thereof.

I considered this. The problem is that to get a palm poult, which would be white, you also need to be carrying a narragansett gene, and if the hen carried a narri gene, she would look like a naragansett. If they each carried a gray gene (a palm gene), and the poult got two palm genes, the poult would look Oregon Gray, which is not all white (at least it gets black on its back at a very early age. I guess I'm not sure if its all white/yellow at hatch). Further, palm genes would not make the wing feathers black.

A recessive black-wing gene is an interesting theory for the solid primaries in the tom. I have some birds carrying recessive black-winged genes this year. It will be interesting to see what there wings look like. I have always considered black-wing bronze to be recessive to standard bronze, but I am not sure why I think that. If they are carrying black-winged genes, then some of the poults should grow up to be black-winged bronze. This is something to watch for.​

 

[Struttn1]

That poult sure looks like a Royal Palm poult just before they start putting on the black barring. You know what they say....."stuff happens".

 

[turkaholic]

After further thought, I think that there are two possibilities. One, both birds are split to white and darkwing. That would give you a white poult. Second, the gobbler could carry a narr gene, darkwing and white while the hen could carry a palm (without being Narragansett), and a darkwing. The results would give you a whole list of possible outcomes ranging from bronze, darkwing bronze, Narragansett, palm and sweetgrass. The poult in the photo shows faint dark markings at the terminal ends of the secondaries, and if I remember correctly, my sweetgrass looked very much the same. Whichever, these birds carry more color genes than one might think!

 

[PlumTuckered]

Thank you so much for all of the great info. This little one was pure white when it hatched, they are 3 weeks old and it does have some very faint black barring on the wings, very little of it though.

Michelle

 

[TammieLC]

Three weeks ago our Bronze Hen hatched out some babies. We had slipped some chicken eggs under her and when six bronze babies and one white baby hatched we just assumed the white one was a chicken from our Buff Orpington gal. Well today I picked that baby up and it's a turkey...my Husband and I had been talking this morning about how funny that this "chicken" acts so much like a turkey...LOL

We only have the one Hen and one Tom, this was her first year laying eggs..in fact these were her first eggs ever, we took her first 7 and checked for fertility then left her eggs alone until she was ready to sit. She had 11 eggs in the nest and 7 hatched. Both of our adult turkeys are Bronze. Has anyone else ever had a white turkey come from their Bronze? This is our first year having Turkeys.

Michelle

I also only have 2 bronze turkeys. 2 of their eggs just hatched in the incubator and one is white! I have 2 more eggs that still need to hatch. So happy to find such knowledgeable people because for the life of me I could not figure it out