Turkeys for Eggs

[memphis]

Hi Moonshiner...maybe this will help. Go to the APA website. (American Poultry Association) They are the sanctioning body for all poultry. You will see that there are a multitude of chicken, goose, duck breeds with various varieties. With turkeys they list only one breed "Turkey" with the different colors listed as varieties. The reason turkeys are considered as only one breed is that the SOP ( Standard of Perfection) is the same for all turkeys. Chickens are divided into different breeds because they have different breed characteristics. Turkey's do not have different breed characteristics....just different colors. I guess until someone develops a turkey with a different breed characteristic, say feathered legs or a crest or top line, we will only have one breed with different color varieties. Another thing to consider...if you pluck a turkey naked....there would be no difference in appearance. They all exhibit the same body type. (type does not consider size or weight by the way) Unlike the different breeds of chicken or dog who exhibit different body type. Hope this makes some sense.

 

[The Moonshiner]

I have looked at that. Do you have anything else that states simular?
The APA is the only thing that I could find that sees it that way. I've seen a lot of other places that also disagrees with that.

The poster that I've been going at this with did bring up the APA and a persons blog as his proof. I would like to see somewhere else that sees it the same.
The other posters new position is that they are all the same species there for the same breed. I can't wrap my head around why being the same species makes all turkeys the same breed but all chickens are the same species but not the same breed. All domestic ducks are the same species but not the same breed.
If I'm wrong who or why decided it worked one way for turkeys but not that way for chickens and ducks?
You have info about that?
Thank you

 

[memphis]

Well, the point is there are no different breed characteristics with turkeys. Just different colors.

 

[memphis]

The Livestock Conservancy recongnizes turkeys as one breed with different color varieties. So does David Porter. You could join his Turkey Genetics 101 facebook group. Maybe they could explain it better than me. But simply a breed (of any animal) displays different characteristics.

 

[memphis]

And your right. Chickens and ducks are divided into different breeds due to the difference in breed characteristics. For instance a silky is different from a Malay due to different physical characteristics . Imagine your turkeys naked...they will look the same.

 

[Kiki]

So what I have learned today is ...
Turkeys are all one breed but
there are different varieties.
Correct?

 

[Kiki]

Thanks guys!

 

[Indyshent]

But the turkey "varieties" do in fact have different standards. The APA simply doesn't allow those to be shown as such. A Royal Palm will not look anything like any other variety once it's plucked. A Midget White is supposed to look like a miniature broad breasted white--plucked or not--but is supposed to be under a certain weight (otherwise it isn't a midget). A white Holland won't look like a MW, even though they're both white, and neither should actually look like a Beltsville. The original Sweetgrass were a broad breasted type build--not merely a color variation of the generic heritage turkey (Porter admits that he bred his version specifically to a generic heritage standard from said birds because he didn't like that body type which isn't advantageous in heritage, free roaming birds).

I don't see why turkey fanciers have to do so much snobbery and infighting on this issue. All other domestic animals get to be breeds if they're different in more than just color. The biggest reasons they aren't branded by breeds (unlike other domestic animals) by super snobby organizations (which must be lobbied on for years to acceot even basic changes to existing breeds of other more popular fowl) has nothing to do with any recognized definitions of "breed."

Bluntly, turkeys aren't a glamorous, popular species. They don't have the extensive histories as Old World fowl. They haven't been domesticated as long as most other livestock species (matter of fact, I don't know any that were domesticated more recently) so they're bound to have fewer breeds and varieties based on that alone. Worse, history has been cruel to the turkey during two major formative eras: the Civil War and the twentieth century. During both eras, genetic diversity of domesticated types plummeted until what used to be separate body types (breeds) were crossed and muddled when they didn't die out completely.

We are what's standing in the way of a complete takeover by the BBW, which now represents almost 100% of the turkey population. We--as fanciers and lovers of these amazing, unpopular, downtrodden, misunderstood birds--have to stop all this crap about there not being breeds. There should be breeds. I'm sure other non-American areas have breeds of turkey, but it's difficult to get the traction necessary to change opinions on such maligned animals.

Turkeys are still recovering from the brink of annihilation, when you think about it--both wild and heritage domestic versions were nearly extinct not so long ago, if you look into it, and several "varieties" have already gone extinct or become so muddled and crossed that nobody can tell them apart anymore. That doesn't mean they don't have or are incapable of being different breeds, it just means we've failed the breeds that used to exist as more distinct than they are now. No, there were never as many types as there have been of chicken, but what types are there nobody seems to want to recognize or keep around anymore. The heritage turkey is struggling just to remain alive and relevant. Maybe once it gets more fans and dedicated breeders, it can get the legal teams and petitions to thwart the idiocy of regulatory bodies (reference the fight to have blue laced red Wyandottes recognized as a legal color if you don't believe the legal hoops breeders have to go through--and the BLRW is a vastly more popular fowl in terms of dedicated breeders and fans than any single variety of turkey)

 

[Indyshent]

And your right. Chickens and ducks are divided into different breeds due to the difference in breed characteristics. For instance a silky is different from a Malay due to different physical characteristics . Imagine your turkeys naked...they will look the same.

This is actually poor logic, when you think about it. A Malay won't look so different from a Modern Game plucked. A Brahma and a Cochin won't look different dressed. A Dominique and a Wyandotte won't look so different. Matter of fact, there's really only a handful of breeds or even breed types that would be recognized dressed or even plucked. A Silkie would be confused for few other breeds plucked, but the Ayam Cemani and the Swedish Black are hard to distinguish, feathered or not. Pluck them and are Plymouth Rock, Sussex, Orpingtons and Delaware so different? There's practically no difference between Sussex and Orpingtons anyway. All Mediterranean breeds would be hard to distinguish plucked and certainly dressed. Most dual purpose breeds are the same way. Games come in wiry, musclebound and leggy types, but that's really the big difference in them.

Here's another example, since you're keen on saying builds make all the difference: breeds of dog, of horse, of cattle, of CATS. Skin a cat and tell me what breed it was--not vaguely what type but a specific breed. Unless it was a Manx, that's going to be a difficult call (and even then, there's another bobtail breed for which it might be confused). Plus, there are multiple standards for some greeds--like Siamese--which may come in triangular faced or apple headed. Tell a skinned Siamese from pretty much any other of the hundreds of fancy cat breeds, and color me impressed. The truth is that cats--even more tgan tyrjeys--basically all have the same purpose, when compared to other domestic animals, and therefore will be hard to tell apart once superficial characteristics are removed. However, they've been domesticated longer than turkeys, are "cuter" and "more companionable" so *voila* they get to have breeds.

Even shaved, a lot of cats and dogs can be confused. If field dressed like a turkey, that number of potential breeds multiplies quite a bit until it's down to a PCR reaction in a biology lab somewhere go determine what breed that animal was. What's the difference between any of the Mastiff types when you skin them or even shave them? Small dogs are even worse about this confusion, and what separate purpose do these many dogs serve, really? How many body types *really* does "companion dog" need? Isn't this why dogs seem to come in many of the same basic purpose driven body types as other domestic animals. Until fairly recently, dogs were all bred for a specific purpose--ratting, retrieving, fighting, protection, herding, and hunting being the biggest purposes, so it shouldn't be surprising that certain breeds within those purposes should be similar when "plucked" of fur or superficial viscera.

Handful of purposes = handful of types, but hundreds of breeds... unless they're turkeys, then they're downgraded to "varieties" even though they still fit the definition of "breeds".

The Livestock Conservancy does state that different varieties even have different standards and purposes. Some are supposed to have a specific color of shanks--colors that would cause other breeds to be penalized, for instance. Black turkeys are supposed to have pink legs, but other pink legged birds would get penalized for not having a different specific shank color (just like with chicken "breeds"). Eye colors are different in some "varieties" too (black based birds have blue based eyes, whereas brown eyes are in bronze based birds). Shanks and eye colors don't disappear when a bird is plucked but would if field dressed, but I've already illustrated that the vast majority of any supposed breed of any domestic animal disappears when the animal is dressed.

The build likewise remains, dressed or not, and the broad breasted build of the Midget White will remain a distinguishing feature therefore when the bird is plucked or dressed. The Beltsville is a small turkey breed with a distinguishing feature--not of looking differently than a younger heritage breed, which it should--but because it can reproduce by parthenogenesis more often than any other known bird--variety or even species, to my knowledge. The White Holland is pretty much a white heritage bird of normal size now (though it was supposedly distinct as larger, once upon a time), so field dressed, it's going to look similar but the reproductive tracts of the fast maturing Midgets and Beltsville birds would make it readily apparent that they weren't just immature specimens of larger varieties when being cleaned.

The Livestock Conservancy explicitly listed the Royal Palm as an ORNAMENTAL "variety"--which means it has already completely different purpose from the get go and therefore cannot look just like other "varieties". Like other ornamental varieties of domestic animal, it will be a poorer animal on the table than its sturdier relatives. RP have the smallest amount of breast muscle when compared to other "varieties" and produce a streamlined, skinny table bird--but they're supposed to. This difference is also clearly seen on Porter's website when you compare the weights of adult birds across these "varieties". The Royal varieties are going to look the same on the table and be about the same weight as each other, but they're all going to get dwarfed by the typical meat producing heritage turkey breeds, like bronze. Hence, by any other definition of a domestic animal, at the very least, Palms should be treated as a breed with varieties of color within that breed.