Porter's Rare Heritage Turkeys
Porter's Rare Heritage Turkeys
Feather Color Genetics
The complete "original turkey color pattern" genotype,
known as "normal,no mutations" bronze or wild type is wrote out like this..
bb CC dd EE NN RR SlSl SpSp
Genes occur in pairs.
Each bird gets one gene from it's sire and one from its dam.
At each site (locus) there is a switch with one, two
or occasionally three options or "alleles".
The final color depends on the sum of alleles at all of the sites.
Upper case letters represent dominant genes, Lower case=recessive.
The first site is the Bronze site.
It has three alleles,
B black, b bronze(normal) and b' black winged bronze.
(B and b1 are mutations)
Second we have the site for Color.
Three alleles at this locus;
C (normal),
cg gray and c white. (cg and c are mutations)
Third site is Dominant Slate;
D dominant slate,(mutation) and d(normal)
Fourth is the Brown site;
E (normal) and e brown . (e is a mutation)
Fifth we have the Narragansett site:
Ng (normal) and ng narragansett (mutation).
Sixth is the Red site:
R (normal) and r red(mutation).
Seventh is the Recessive Slate site:
Sl (normal) and sl recessive slate (mutation)
Eighth is the Spotting site:
Sp for (normal) and sp spotting(mutation)
The turkey variety known as the Nebraskan
carried this gene.
There is possibly a Ninth site,The Pencilling site:
This is still being studied to see if this mutation is
actually located at a different locus of it's own or
just a modifier of b'.
At this time we list this as Pn for normal and pn
for the pencilling mutation.