Pics of a newly hatched blond Narragansett

[gotta have my peeps!]

We love our Narragansetts and are glad we chose the breed. I ordered them as day-old poults from Welp Hatchery in Iowa in spring of 2010. You have to order 15 as a minimum. Maybe I should ask them about their breeding program.

I love the mystery about our blondie! There are two other hens that could be the mom, but Mr. Blue is our only tom. Immaculate conception?

I will try to get recent pics of the other two girls for comparison. Lagerdogger, thank you for the genetics info. It is fascinating. I have so much to learn.

Here is the poult at 2 days old. Not the best pictures, I will try to get some at a better angle tomorrow. So far, I don't see any of the patterning like the poults in Lagerdogger's photo.

 

[ColbyNTX]

Most hatcheries don't raise their own turkeys. I don't know which ones do. They are up to the word of the breeder and their breeding programs. That poult looks just like a Sweetgrass! I don't know of another that looks just like that. If it is, it will start to turn white followed by black on its wings. When it's about 8 weeks or so it will start to get brown. Keep us updated as it grows. Don't know for sure if that's how it will color but it's not a narragansett!

 

[Lagerdogger]

Hmmmm. Looks like a sweetgrass! Brave call Colby

How do you get a sweetgrass from Narragansett parents. Each parent would have to be carrying a black-wing gene and a gray gene, which can certainly be the case if they were crossed with royal palm not too long ago. Also required is the condition that the mom must only have one narragansett gene (hens look like narragansetts with only one narragansett gene, toms need two). Then, a poult could get a black-wing, gray, and narragansett gene from the tom and a black-wing, gray, and "not narragansett" gene from the hen. I'm not sure how the narragansett gene would express itself in a hen, but the tom would probably look sweetgrass. If the poult got narragansett genes from both parents, it would be royal palm.

How many poults have you hatched from your narragansett parents. I see they are young birds. But if you have more poults you should watch for bronze, royal palm or black-winged narragansett. If the above scenario is correct, about one in four poults should have black wings (solid gray primaries), about half your male offspring would not look like narragansetts but would be bronze or black-wing bronze (it would take a few weeks to tell the difference), and every once in a while you could get a royal palm (1 in 32, same odds as getting the sweetgrass).

By the way, the pictures are excellent and show all the features needed.

Are you sure there are no other choices for parents?

 

[ColbyNTX]

Yes, its been 20 years since I took genetics in college so its all blah, blah, blah to me now! I just call it as it looks!

 

[gotta have my peeps!]

Thank you Colby and Lagerdogger for your help and insights. I really do find the genetics fascinating and hope to learn more about it.

Quote:
We are very new to hatching turkeys. We have eight poults hatched this season. That's it.

I kept six hens and one tom from the batch of Narragansetts I ordered last year and the first egg came around Thanksgiving. My intent was to see if the flock would breed on their own.

Two of the hens sat on a clutch of eggs and managed to hatch three poults successfully (there were at least five that pipped and were squashed by the pair before they could hatch). When I realized what was happening I brought the other eggs inside to a borrowed incubator. Two more hatched, alive but less than perfect. Another hen started setting but abandoned the eggs early on, my husband brought them in to the incubator and I monitored them for the next four weeks. We got three poults from that group including blondie.

I still need to get good pictures together of the possible moms. (My camera is charging.) We live in the Virginia Piedmont and I hear wild turkeys in the woods from time to time. We often see a wild turkey hen on our driveway. She could not have laid any eggs in the nesting house or I would have known it. I think we would have noticed if a wild tom started hanging around.

 

[ColbyNTX]

A wild Tom or hen wouldn't give you that color anyway. Get some pics up!

 

[gotta have my peeps!]

I got some pictures today of the hens. I posted them on my website (so my daughter in Boston can see them too).

 

[ColbyNTX]

gotta have my peeps! :

I got some pictures today of the hens. I posted them on my website (so my daughter in Boston can see them too).

She can't get BYC in Boston?

 

[gotta have my peeps!]

Haha!

She's got a busy life ... so I make it easy for her to keep up with the old homestead.

 

[kagedgoddess]

Your turkeys are beautiful! I hatched some possible sweetgrass poults. They look like your hatchling pictures.