Which turkey do I cull?

[fordguy]

Father Tom 1 bred with Hen 1 and produced Hen 2 and Hen 3.


Hen 1 and either 2 or 3 together had 11 brood.

Of those 11 brood, 2 are toms.

Tom 1 is mean as a snake. I'd like to start over with Toms but somewhere I heard that Tom 1 can breed with all his daughters, but Toms 2 and 3 may not or they may cause genetic troubles.

Can you guys give me some options? thanks.

 

[ColbyNTX]

Eat tom 1 if he's mean! You can use the other toms for breeding. 1 generation won't be too bad.

 

[syble]

always cull a mean tom. I know many people use toms from the same breeding group over and over again

 

[Lagerdogger]

The more closely related that a breeding pair is, the more likely you are to have genetic problems. Siblings are as closely related as you can get, so they are the least desirble to breed together. While you ight get away with it once, when you then breed parent to offspring, your really still breeding siblings (all the genes are from the original sibling cross). It may be wiser to find another tom from a different source.

AS mentioned, you probably wont see anything the first time, but the risk of developing some problems eventually is much higher.

A common breeding system does involve breeding parents to their offspring, and then again to their grand offspring. But after that, you want to get some new genes in the system. Since you will have to find another tom eventually, you might as well do it now before problems show up that may be difficult to breed out.