Sweetgrass = Royal Palm x Bourbon Red cross??

[happydog]

I've got an ad on craigslist to sell my Royal Palm breeders. I've decided to just stick with my Bourbon Reds. I just got a call from a guy who raises Sweetgrass turkeys and he was telling me that Sweetgrasses are nothing more than a cross between a Royal Palm and a Bourbon Red!? Oh yeah??? Is that true?

 

[Omniskies]

Yes and no. You can make Sweetgrass/Calico turkeys using a Bourbon x Royal Palm cross. Most people won't know the difference and that's where a lot of the tri-colors come from.

But a first-generation cross isn't going to be a proper Variety as far as I'm concerned. A Sweetgrass is going to be a turkey that came from Sweetgrass and breeds true to Sweetgrass, including the proper shank color, _and_ falls within the standard range of weight for Sweetgrass.

 

[gotturkey]

does it matter what breed the tom and the
hen is? like with sexlink chickens.

 

[Omniskies]

No, it doesn't. But what you are doing is crossing two colors and keeping back the poults that look like calicos. Not everythign that hatches out will look like a Sweetgrass. And just because you have two poults that look right doesn't mean that when you cross them together you'll get the right colored offspring.

 

[Jake Levi]

Google Porter Turkeys, they have many color varieties and excellent photos of each along with info on the genetics of them,

I think that the Sweetgrass is a very attractive variety.

 

[Thomasturkey]

There is no red gene in a Sweetgrass. A Sweetgrass has two Blackwing bronze genes and two Grey (Palm) genes. It gets one gene from each parent.
You will not get a blackwing bronze gene or a grey (palm) gene from a Bourbon Red. Bourbon Reds have two wild bronze genes that are domant to blackwing bronze. And two red gene

 

[Lagerdogger]

When you cross a royal palm and a bourbon red, you get a pretty interesting bird. It looks like a red bronze, but has reccessive black-wing, narragansett, and palm genes. When you cross these offspring back to other birds with the same genes, you can get sweetgrass. But you will get lots of other stuff as well.

 

[turkeybreeder]

there is no bourbon red gene
in sweetgrass turkeys they have royal palm genes
and black wing bronze genes
you can see at porterturkeys .com
what genes they have
have a great weekend