Royal Palm Turkey

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The Royal Palm Turkey is active, thrifty, an excellent forager, and good flyer. The standard weights for these turkeys are 16 pounds for young toms and 10 pounds for young hens. Royal Palms play a valuable role on small farms, both as a producer of meat and controller of insects.

The Royal Palm turkey is white with sharply contrasting metallic black edging on the feathers. The saddle is black, which provides a contrast against the white base color of body plumage. The tail is pure white, with each feather having a band of black and an edge of white. The coverts are white with a band of black, and the wings are white with a narrow edge of black across each feather. The breast is white with the exposed portion of each feather ending in a band of black to form a contrast of black and white similar to the scales of a fish. The turkeys have red to bluish white heads, a light horn beak, light brown eyes, red to bluish white throat and wattles, and deep pink shanks and toes. The beard is black.

The Royal Palm is a strikingly attractive and small-sized turkey variety. The first birds in America to have the Palm color pattern appeared in a mixed flock of Black, Bronze, Narragansett, and Wild turkeys on the farm of Enoch Carson of Lake Worth, Florida in the 1920s. Further selection has been made since then to stabilize the consistency of color and other characteristics.

The Royal Palm turkey is listed as “Threatened” in the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy’s Conservation Priority List. This list defines a “Threatened” variety as having fewer than 1,000 breeding birds in the US with 7 or fewer primary breeding flocks. These varieties are considered globally endangered.

Sources

All American Turkey Growers Association
Danny Williamson
3441 Mustang
Tampa, KS 67483
785-965-2628
.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

Ayershire Farm
21846 Trappe Rd.,
Upperville, VA 20184
540-336-4232
http://www.ayrshirefarm.com

For More Information:

American Livestock Breeds Conservancy
P.O. Box 477
Pittsboro, NC 27312
919-542-5704
http://www.albc-usa.org

ALBC’s List of Heritage Turkey Producers
ALBC Manual - How to Raise Heritage Turkeys on Pasture

American Poultry Association
5757 West Fork Road
Cincinnati OH 45247
513-598-4337
http://www.amerpoultryassn.com

Society for the Preservation of Poultry Antiquities
Dr. Charles R.H. Everett, Secretary-Treasurer
1057 Nick Watts Road
Lugoff, SC 29078
803-960-2114
http://www.feathersite.com/Poultry/SPPA/SPPA.html

Birds of a Feather, Saving Rare Turkeys from Extinction
By Carolyn J. Christman and Robert O. Hawes
Published by American Livestock Breeds Conservancy (1999)

Find Producers on LocalHarvest

http://www.localharvest.org/ark-product.jsp?id=231