archaeopteryx
Hatching
- Aug 10, 2025
- 4
- 8
- 9
Hey, new member here. I've been keeping chickens for almost 25 years but have only recently delved into turkeys. I got nine heritage poults from Tractor Supply in 2024, and all but one of them were easy to identify. I'm curious about the outlier.
This is the girl in question, next to a Bourbon and a Bronze for comparison. I know that the red light doesn't exactly help, sorry about that, but these are all I have. As a baby she looked like a very faded version of the Bronze, greyish in the body with warmer coloration on her head, with the same head stamp pattern as the Bronze.
Here she is as an adult, pale slate blue with faint warm undertones on her tail and wings (unfortunately her primaries are trimmed in these pictures, I hate to do it but it's that or fly over the fence and be dog food so it can't really be helped)
Of the nine babies from 2024, seven made it to adulthood. The Bronze (Jeff the Killer) developed a crippling inability to walk or stand up around 8 months old and had to be euthanized, and one of the female Bourbons (aptly named Cannonball) got into the dog yard while I was right there in the act of putting a baffle on top of the fence to prevent that exact thing from happening
So my adult flock consists of:
Toms:
1 Bourbon Red (Harry)
1 Blue Slate (Blueberry)
Jennies:
1 Black Spanish (Maverick)
1 Bourbon Red (Amelia)
2 Royal Palms (Barbie and Ken)
1 mystery girl (Karen, because she's up in everyone's business)
This year most of the jennies have been broody, sharing the same nest and sitting on top of each other (not for lack of other options). A few of the eggs finally hatched on a cold and drizzly night in May, but by morning only one baby had survived the unseasonable weather and the trampling of the clumsy first-time moms. I plucked her out of the soup and put her in with this year's batch of chicken babies for her own protection (not ideal, but better than getting stomped).
She's very aloof so I only got these bad pictures of her at one day old, my apologies again. At birth she looked almost exactly like Karen (mystery girl) looked as a baby, but with a warmer colored head and the Bourbon head stamp, so we're guessing that Karen is the mom and Harry is the dad. Blueberry (Slate) is hopelessly incompetent with the ladies, and Maverick (Black Spanish) and Amelia (Bourbon) don't lay their eggs in the same nest where the babies hatched. That only leaves the Royal Palms, but the appearance of the baby seems to rule them out (please correct me if I'm wrong!)
Here's the baby (Lucky) at around two months old, bronze with pencilling on many of her feathers.
So the question is, what breed/color morph is Karen? I've found photos online of adults that look like her, including some Narragansett variants (here, for example) but the poults of those varieties don't match how she looked when she was a baby. Hopefully this is enough to narrow it down. I can take more pictures if it would help, and I can post more pictures of Lucky as she matures and gets her adult plumage in. I guess it doesn't really matter, but I'm curious.
Thanks in advance for any help!
This is the girl in question, next to a Bourbon and a Bronze for comparison. I know that the red light doesn't exactly help, sorry about that, but these are all I have. As a baby she looked like a very faded version of the Bronze, greyish in the body with warmer coloration on her head, with the same head stamp pattern as the Bronze.
Here she is as an adult, pale slate blue with faint warm undertones on her tail and wings (unfortunately her primaries are trimmed in these pictures, I hate to do it but it's that or fly over the fence and be dog food so it can't really be helped)
Of the nine babies from 2024, seven made it to adulthood. The Bronze (Jeff the Killer) developed a crippling inability to walk or stand up around 8 months old and had to be euthanized, and one of the female Bourbons (aptly named Cannonball) got into the dog yard while I was right there in the act of putting a baffle on top of the fence to prevent that exact thing from happening
So my adult flock consists of:
Toms:
1 Bourbon Red (Harry)
1 Blue Slate (Blueberry)
Jennies:
1 Black Spanish (Maverick)
1 Bourbon Red (Amelia)
2 Royal Palms (Barbie and Ken)
1 mystery girl (Karen, because she's up in everyone's business)
This year most of the jennies have been broody, sharing the same nest and sitting on top of each other (not for lack of other options). A few of the eggs finally hatched on a cold and drizzly night in May, but by morning only one baby had survived the unseasonable weather and the trampling of the clumsy first-time moms. I plucked her out of the soup and put her in with this year's batch of chicken babies for her own protection (not ideal, but better than getting stomped).
She's very aloof so I only got these bad pictures of her at one day old, my apologies again. At birth she looked almost exactly like Karen (mystery girl) looked as a baby, but with a warmer colored head and the Bourbon head stamp, so we're guessing that Karen is the mom and Harry is the dad. Blueberry (Slate) is hopelessly incompetent with the ladies, and Maverick (Black Spanish) and Amelia (Bourbon) don't lay their eggs in the same nest where the babies hatched. That only leaves the Royal Palms, but the appearance of the baby seems to rule them out (please correct me if I'm wrong!)
Here's the baby (Lucky) at around two months old, bronze with pencilling on many of her feathers.
So the question is, what breed/color morph is Karen? I've found photos online of adults that look like her, including some Narragansett variants (here, for example) but the poults of those varieties don't match how she looked when she was a baby. Hopefully this is enough to narrow it down. I can take more pictures if it would help, and I can post more pictures of Lucky as she matures and gets her adult plumage in. I guess it doesn't really matter, but I'm curious.
Thanks in advance for any help!
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