Beautiful Breed: Harvest Gold Turkeys

Beautiful Breed: Harvest Gold Turkeys LIVESTOCK Miscellaneous They re the most beautiful turkey imaginable says Dr Tom T Walker about the new breed of turkey he has developed called Harvest Gold He wasn t sure what he d get when he started breeding Black Spanish to Regal Reds both heritage breeds     Harvest Gold turkeys have gold-fringed multi-colored neck and shoulder feathers and a burnt copper fan heavily peppered with black Tail feathers have greenish bronze bands with an old gold outer edge     It took three years to establish a couple of breeding lines between two pairs of solid black and red birds It was a serendipitous find      I was working on Regal Reds to get them back to the right size for mating Walker says explaining the breed had been thought to be extinct when a breeder found some in Iowa They had gotten too large for egg fertility so Walker experimented with breeding it to another solid color turkey then breeding that offspring with another solid red turkey     He was surprised - but delighted - when that mating resulted in the new bird      They re a strong calm even-tempered breed says Walker They lay 16 to 18 eggs do a good job setting on eggs and are good mothers     Breeding a pair of Harvest Golds doesn t ensure all the poults will be Harvest Golds however      Like some other color patterns of turkeys the Harvest Golds produce only a percentage of poults that are Harvest Golds Walker says On average 60 percent are Harvest Gold and the remaining 40 percent are divided between solid red and Blackwing Bronze breeds     Walker 82 sells Harvest Gold poults and other heritage varieties to breeders from his two lines of birds An experimenter and turkey breeder since he was in junior high Walker finds satisfaction in his accomplishment Even his wife who doesn t get excited about turkeys appreciates his Harvest Gold breed      She says that peacocks don t have anything to strut about compared to the Harvest Golds he says     Contact: FARM SHOW Followup Dr Tom T Walker 278 Porter Road Bastrop Texas 78602 ph 512 925-7941; tomnmarg @onr com

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