sweetgrass TURKEYS

[DaKid]

Ok Let see ur Sweet Grass Turkey , and are they a mix breed of turkey



Thanks Alan

 

[the Old Rebel]

I've never heard of a sweetgrass turkey. What does it look like??

 

[DaKid]

Not sure I seen the name posted so I like to know my self mever heard of them

 

[longranger]

check out porterturkeys.com. They have some sweetgrass pictures.

 

[DaKid]

Yep thats where I seen them ;
http://www.porterturkeys.com/sweetgrass.htm

.porterturkeys.com/sweetgrass
The Sweetgrass strain itself first appeared in 1996 in a flock of Heritage Bronze Turkeys in Big Timber, MT, at Sweetgrass Farms. Most people are now calling this color/pattern by this name .

The Sweetgrass genotype is (b1b1cgcg) Black winged bronze based with Oregon Gray (aka Palm genes) They breed 100% true to color/pattern.

In Belgium, this color pattern has existed for hundreds of years and it is known as the Yellow-shouldered Ronquière. A clear example of one of these turkeys appears in an old painting, by the Flemish master Joachim Beuckelaars, from 1566!

I developed my strain from the Sweetgrass Farms' line in Big Timber,MT. These birds have a heavily marked royal palm pattern with chestnut red. My new strain has a heritage turkey body style, they are not a broadbreasted type like the ones developed at Sweetgrass Farms. As with all the broadbreasted type birds you run into many other problems too like the need for artificial insemination and also health problems due to the massive body structure which leads to leg and heart problems .

I have selectively bred this line down to a much trimmer body type which can breed naturally and are also very hardy.

Mature toms weigh around 30 pounds and hens around 15 lbs.

Yep so there are a highbred cross of turkeys​

 

[melcahoon]

I have some sweetgrass turkeys and love them! They are a larger breed among the heritage turkeys so they are great for meat and they can reproduce naturally. Plus, they are beautiful birds!
Steve

 

[Ncturkeylover]

this is my new sweetgrass Tom got him about 3 days ago and so much in love with him

 

[TV]

Quote:
Yep so there are a highbred cross of turkeys

Nowhere does it say that Sweetgrass are a hybrid variety of turkey. True Sweetgrass breed true and produce only more Sweetgrass. Hybrid varieties won't breed true.

 

[Lagerdogger]

Nowhere does it say that Sweetgrass are a hybrid variety of turkey. True Sweetgrass breed true and produce only more Sweetgrass. Hybrid varieties won't breed true.

It is an interesting question "what is a hybrid variety?" There is not a standard of perfection for sweetgrass. And while sweetgrass breed true, you do not need any sweetgrass to produce one. So if you can derive a color by mixing other colors, is it a hybrid or not?

If you want to get sweetgrass from a standard variety (one of the colors in the Standard of Perfection), you start with royal palms, because they are black-winged bronze based (b1) and have the gray genes (cg). They also have Narragansett genes (ng). So royal palm is b1b1cgcgngng, and if you can just get rid of the narragansett genes, you will get sweetgrass b1b1cgcg. So how do we do that? One way would be to cross the royal palms with standard bronze. The resulting offspring will be bb1CcgNgng, where b is the bronze base, C is not white, and Ng is not Narragansett. If you cross these together, you will get many combinations. Some will get two bronze genes bb, and some will get two black-wing bronze genes b1b1, and some will get one of each bb1. At the white gene site, some will get two not white CC, some will get two gray cgcg, and some will get one of each Ccg. Finally, at the Narragansett site, some will get two Not Narragansett genes NgNg, some will get two Narragansett genes ngng, and some will get one of each Ngng (this gene is sex linked, so hens onlt get one gene at that site. Lets ignore that for now). So some birds will be bbCCngng, and be Narragansetts, some will be b1b1cgcgngng and be royal palms. Some will be bb1CcgNgng, and look like bronzes but carry recessive genes, and some will be b1b1cgcgNgNg, and be sweetgrass. Other combinations are also possible. But the relevant question is "are sweetgrass hybrids?" What about Narragansetts that were also produced without a Narragansett parent?

Food for thought, and also Thanksgiving!

 

[TV]

True, and the same could be said for virtually all domestic poultry, all varieties or breeds are bred from something else. I think one criteria for hybrid is that when bred together, they do not produce more of themselves. Mate 2 Red Sexlink chickens or 2 Cornish X and you won't get more of the same. Mate 2 Sweetgrass turkeys and you get more Sweetgrass turkeys.