he
heritage turkey poults are quite beautiful. I took pictures of a few of them and
then sent the pictures off to the lady from Salt Spring Island where we got our
hatching eggs from to help us ID the varieties of them. July 6, 2007
he
heritage turkey poults are quite beautiful. I took pictures of a few of them and
then sent the pictures off to the lady from Salt Spring Island where we got our
hatching eggs from to help us ID the varieties of them.
Picture Above: This one should turn
into a pure black when fully grown. The white will probably disappear we were
told.
Picture Below: We currently have no idea what variety this chocolate
brown one is. Keep your fingers crossed for a true Chocolate as there were only 4
known males and 9 known females in North America in 1999. So many of the
heritage 'breeds' are dying out. To make things more kinda confusing, the
breed is "Turkey", the varieties are all the different colours. That
said, the APA may change a couple of the varieties to breed status.
Picture Above: This 'silvery' colour
may turn Slate, Splash, Lavender or Blue. Most of the poults we had hatch are
this colour.
Picture Below: We also have no idea what variety this speckled guy is. It
looks similar to Bronze, but we are not sure we should have gotten Bronze from
the other varieties the woman keeps.
Stay tuned for when it gets its adult feathering.
What is a "Heritage Turkey" anyway? And why should we care about them?
These turkeys are not like the ones you get in the grocery store for holidays.
Those turkeys are geared to grow fast and put on alot of breast meat. They have
been converted so radically that these birds can no longer mate naturally and
all the eggs, to produce more, have to be artificially inseminated.
The Narragansett, the oldest U.S. turkey breed and once the foundation of the New England turkey industry, has been reduced to just a few hundred birds in all North America. The Jersey Buffs, Bourbon Reds and about 15 or so others varieties are all but gone. Some are extinct. These rare turkeys are called heritage breeds. Today, they are raised by 300 or fewer small-scale breeders.
There is a conservationist movement that includes the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy, the Rare Heritage Turkey Association and Slow Food USA, a not-for-profit, volunteer organization of food lovers. Slow Food is committed to saving endangered breeds of turkey by encouraging farmers to grow them and consumers to demand them.
Heritage turkeys are defined by the historic, range-based production system in which they are raised. Turkeys must meet all of the following criteria to qualify as a Heritage turkey:
1. Naturally mating: the Heritage Turkey must be reproduced and genetically maintained through natural mating, with expected fertility rates of 70-80%. This means that turkeys marketed as “heritage” must be the result of naturally mating pairs of both grandparent and parent stock.
2. Long productive outdoor lifespan: the Heritage Turkey must have a long productive lifespan. Breeding hens are commonly productive for 5-7 years and breeding toms for 3-5 years. The Heritage Turkey must also have a genetic ability to withstand the environmental rigors of outdoor production systems.
3. Slow growth rate: the Heritage Turkey must have a slow to moderate rate of growth. Today’s heritage turkeys reach a marketable weight in about 28 weeks, giving the birds time to develop a strong skeletal structure and healthy organs prior to building muscle mass. This growth rate is identical to that of the commercial varieties of the first half of the 20th century.
About 60 breeds of domestic livestock around the world go extinct each year, never to be again. Things like reading that the last pair of Oregon Grey turkeys died in 1999 and no more have been found.. and that only one each of the Chestnut and the Fawn were found and it is likely they will die out as well make me very sad. What can we do about it? If you cannot raise heritage turkeys (or other endangered livestock breeds), help support someone who does. Buy eggs for your breakfast from the person who raises Rhode Island Reds instead of the hybrid "red hy-lines' or the commercial battery cages, eat Belted Galloway beef, purchase Tamworth pork, have a heritage turkey for your Christmas, Thanksgiving or other holiday dinner... ironically, by buy eating these animals for your food, you are securing their future as people will continue to breed them and not let them die out the way of the Dodo Bird.