Turkey colours

[Lagerdogger]

Your tom definitely is carrying a red gene, and probably some other stuff as well (I'm thinking gray). The hen looks like a regular St Bronze, but may have a gray gene in her as well.

The four month old poult is classic red bronze material, and the younger brown poult will probably develop into a red bronze as well. The white-winged dark birds look like Oregon Grays from the pictures you have. Look at the Porter's Turkeys site and see if the Oregon Grey resembles your bird, or give us a whole bird picture. To get an Oregon grey, you need a bronze based bird with two gray genes. That's why I think your tom and at least one hen are carrying gray genes. A picture of the whole bird might clarify this.

To RFWombat. If you cross a red palm with a narragansett, all the offspring should be golden narragansett rather than red bronze because both the palm and narri have double recessive Narragansett genes. So none of the offspring can have a "not Narragansett" gene. Red bronzes should not have any Narragansett genes, but toms can carry one. Are you sure that your crosses were as dark as the red bronze pictured here? I would love to see pictures of your birds to see what happened

 

[rfwombat]

Hello Lagerdogger. Here is a pic of one of the red bronze jakes, Ivan. For some reason I can't get it to rotate... The tom was a Narragansett and the hen was a Red Palm also pictured (although she looks terrible because she's starting to molt). What do you think?

 

[Lagerdogger]

Quote:
I think your red palm hen is a bourbon red, which would not have any Narragansett in it. The jake is definitely red bronze (carrying a single invisible Narragansett gene), which is what you would expect if you crossed a Narri tom with a bourbon red hen. I can also see the very Narri tom in the background of the first picture.

Red palms should have a white wing coverts with red tips, while bourbon reds should have red wing coverts (the wing coverts are the patch of long feathers covering the base of the wings. The light grey wing patch on your Narragansett). I can't tell in your picture if the wing coverts are red and short or white and long. I think the coverts are the dark red patch just above the clipped white secondaries. A better picture would clarify that. The other difference is that the red palms should have black on the back and tail coverts like a Royal Palm. I don't see any black in your hen.

I do love the dark green and brown in the tails of red bronzes. One of my favorites. Thanks for the picture.