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.
Thanks guys!
