Who's the daddy? BR or Blue Slate? NEW PIC !!

[Arielle]

I have 9 poults from the BR hen I lost earlier this week. Before buying her she was in a pen with both a BR tom and a Blue SLate tom. When I bought the BR hen I also bought the BR tom and housed them together, and collected eggs for about 10 days.9 hatched.

When they were a few days old I looked at the poult pics on Porter's Turkeies pages; THey looked like the BR babies not like the BLue slates.

At a couple weeks old and feathering out, the new feathers are a pale, very pale bourbon red. Even the wing tips. Adult BR are white wing tips. Is this the normal young bird color for a bourbon red? Or is the dad the blue slate providing dilution genes?

I found this pic of lordvoldermort's birds; it will help convey the coloration of my poults. Look at the two lower birds at 6 and 9 o'clock.To match mine: dilute the entire coloration and add bit of pale pink-lav tint.

 

[ColbyNTX]

Pics really help but BR's are very light until about their 3rd molt. As new poults they are yellow with rust spots in areas.

 

[Arielle]

COlby thanks--you're info is consistent with the evidence so far.Was just reading color genetics -- took several genetic classes at university and it takes a bit of concentration!!

As newborns, the poults looked yellow with rusty patches; not gray with yellow mask(pure blue slates).

Not sure how the dilution gene would effect the coloring (from the blue slate); but the 9 poults look exactly alike. If the blue slate was the dad I would expect 50% to have the dilution gene and 50% not have the dilution gene. Also the base color would become black, not bronze But I'm not sure what this looks like in a 2 wk poult.


Most blue slates are BBDd(slate) BBDD(lav) or BBdd (blk) Old syle slates are on b+b+. Bourbon Reds are b+b+rr

Is the poults b+b+rr for BR or Bb+r_ D_ and Bb+d_r_ for BRx SB?

 

[Arielle]

These are pure Bourbon Reds , pic by Kuntrygirl. The top and bottom birds look much like mine.

Mine are smaller, not as light, and mine have more flecks of dark barring on the wing feathers. Patience I guess will reveal who they are for sure!

 

[Lagerdogger]

Based on your description and addendums to the pics, it is obvious that the tom was not the bourbon red. If the only other choice is a blue turkey, then that turkey is either bronze based or carrying a bronze gene. True Blue Slates are black based birds. If a black-based bird had been the parent, your poults would have looked more like the larger black poults in your picture. Also, since blue genes are dominant (rather than recessive like most color genes), your slate parent may have had only one blue gene.

So both parents donated a bronze gene, and the hen donated a red gene. If this was all there was, your poult would look like the picture, except be paler and show yellow where the picture shows white or light tan, and would grow up into a red bronze. I don't raise blue birds myself, so I don't know if the pink tinge is the Blue and red combination, or if the slate, which was not a purebred, was carrying something else.

 

[Arielle]

DH took pics of my poults. THese are 2 weeks old. All 9 look exactly alike.

 

[ColbyNTX]

That is a BR poult! The ones in the first pic at the 6 & 9 position are either bronze or narragansett as lager said.

 

[Arielle]

Thank you everyone to sort ot whose the daddy. It determines my search for a replacement hen(s) and toms. Thank y ou !

THanks for the PM Laggerdogger, sorry for the confusion over the pictures. Next time I will get right to my own pic showing the birds; words are dificult, pics = 1000 words.

Laggerdogger wrote:
If the poults you are talking about are all the pale red ones in your added picture, then the daddy is the Bourbon Red, and life is simple.​