Left: Adolf "hairy" female. Right: A "hairy" and a normal poult. A hairy, easily identifiac! nt hoicl-ing 

 time, has wiry down which shows no flufFiness. The skin on its back is frequently visible, as if the 

 down were pasted on unevenly. 



^ain(f^unj&ecf4^ 



CAN BE ELIMINATED 



By ROBERT SMYTH, JR. Departmen? of Poultry Husbandry 



IF YOU HAVE ever seen turkeys 

 with coarse, hairy or ragged plu- 

 mage and upon closer examination 

 of their individual feathers you 

 could not find any normal webbing, 

 then you were looking at what the 

 turkeymen call "hairys." This ab- 

 normal feather condition has ap- 

 peared in recent years in a number of 

 Broadbreasted Bronze turkey breed- 

 ing flocks. 



How do hairys get along with their 

 normal brothers and sisters? If left 

 to compete with normal poults, as 

 young turkeys are called, hairys 

 have a mortality rate four times 

 greater than that of the normal 

 poults up to 12 weeks of age, partly 

 because hairys are frequently victims 

 of cannibalism. Generally, they sur- 

 vive and develop satisfactorily after 

 moving to a range, providing that 

 the climate is good. Heavy rains or 

 cold rainy spells add to the losses in 

 this group. 



Hairy Poults Loss to Producer 



Hairy poults are culls and are a 

 loss to the producer. Because these 



poults have a high mortality it costs 

 the growers more to produce a pound 

 of turkey meat. It is easy to see, 

 then, why turkeymen want to elim- 

 inate this hairy characteristic from 

 commercial strains of turkeys. 



Hairy Plumage Inherited 



Hairy plumage, like many of the 

 feather-color patterns has a simple, 

 clear-cut type of inheritance. Since 

 the condition is due to a single re- 

 cessive gene that is not sex-linked, 

 normal birds may produce hairy 

 oflFspiing. 



When two carriers mate, one- 

 quarter of their offspring are hairy. 

 The only way, then, to eliminate 

 this condition from a flock would be 

 to eliminate all carriers by test- 

 mating the normals with hairys. 

 Those individuals that produce only 

 normal poults from the test mating 

 do not carry the hairy gene. By 

 using only noncarriers to produce 

 the next generation, the hairy con- 

 dition will be eliminated in a single 

 season. 



11 



