A History of the Midget White Turkey
(Page 2 of 2)
May 12, 2004
By J. R. Smyth Jr. and B.C. Wentworth
Wentworth used a rigorous pedigree approach to expand this flock of Midget white turkeys each year with great effort to avoid further inbreeding. He fixed the white color and continued to improve fleshing over the years. In the late 1970s an embryonic lethal gene began to be expressed (causing some poults to die before hatching). Over a period of about three years Wentworth was successful in eliminating the stock carrying this lethal gene.
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From the mid ’70s on, selection pressure was maintained to fix tom body weight to about 13 pounds and hens at about 8 pounds. About every third year, breast meat volume was included as selection index in addition to body weight. Wentworth selected annually for higher egg production, fertility and hatchability. The hatchability averaged about 80 percent when the flock was dispersed. The original stock Wentworth obtained did not lay very well, averaging only about 30 or 40 eggs during a breeding season.
Currently the midgets lay 60 to 80 eggs per year. The eggs are quite large and appear similar to the eggs laid by the large broadbreasted lines of turkeys; they weigh only 3 to 5 grams less. The midget white turkey has the appearance of a miniature of the large commercial white line, for it has a very broad breast. This is not a commercially economically important meat bird, as Wentworth estimates the feed conversion is about 4 pounds of feed per pound of weight gain.
The midget white turkeys do not have any direct genetic relationship to the Beltsville white turkey.
J. R. Smyth Jr. holds a doctorate in poultry genetics and served on the faculty at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Mass. B.C. Wentworth holds doctorates in poultry science and avian physiology and is professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wis.
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