More than a half-century ago, researchers outside Washington, D.C., engaged in some creative barnyard breeding. Their offices were at the Beltsville Agricultural Research Center. And their goal was the development of fatherless turkeys — hens whose eggs would hatch without being fertilized by a tom. Along the way, and quite by accident, an interim stage of this work resulted in a “churk.” Or that’s the scientists’ term for a hybrid that had a chicken for a father and a turkey for a mother.
Adding insult to injury, the churks were only half as smart as their parents, according to Marlow Olsen. He’s the scientist who headed the fowl research project.
It would be tempting to call this bird an ugly chuckling or a pathetic gobbler, except that the hybrid remained largely silent — unless disturbed. Then it emitted a puny, chickeny chirp.
But that didn’t prevent Science News from crowing about the animal as a “history-making cross” in its November 5, 1960, cover story. The story billed it as “the first known hybrid of two families of birds.”
The text also suggested why we’d hear little more about the animal. The hybrids were all male, so they couldn’t reproduce. The offspring proved devilishly difficult to nurture, even just to hatching. The three Beltsville birds that lived to seven months of age were the sole survivors of 2,900 eggs that the scientists had fertilized using sperm cells from a male chicken.
Olsen was not the first to encounter trouble while creating a chicken-turkey hybrid. A 1960 paper he authored in the Journal of Heredity cited a reference to 12 previous trials. None had resulted in a single hatchling. Several additional reports claimed to produce a few live young, he says, but offered no details. Part of the problem likely traced to a dramatic mismatch of the parents’ genes.
Chromosomes are threadlike structures in each cell that carry the genes that pass on inherited traits. Chickens possess six pairs of chromosomes. Turkeys have nine. Each offspring receives one-half of each chromosome pair from its mom and its dad. That should result in a newly matched pairing of traits from each parent. Except that the 15 chromosomes that each hybrid started with had no chance of pairing appropriately into six chromosomes like dad’s, nine like mom’s — or any other number in between.
Mother Nature, however, has created what looks like a healthy chicken-turkey hybrid: the colorfully named Transylvanian naked neck chicken. The difference is that there are no turkeys in this bird’s ancestry.
As its name implies, this breed has featherless necks. “We initially worked on identifying the mutation that causes the naked neck trait in chickens, as we are interested in understanding how patterns arise,” explains Denis Headon. He works at the Roslin Institute and Scotland’s University of Edinburgh’s Royal School of Veterinary Studies. His team traced the trait to where “part of chromosome 1 had moved across to chromosome 3 and inserted,” he says. Follow-up studies, Headon adds, showed that genes make the neck skin of these birds especially susceptible to losing the ability to produce feathers.
Naked-necked chickens of various types occur around the world. In some parts of the Middle East, Africa and Asia, Headon speculates, this could develop because such chickens “are more tolerant of heat than are fully feathered chickens.”
As for Transylvania as the birds’ ancestral home: “This seems quite unlikely,” he says. “Domestic animals often have geographically misleading names (the turkey itself being a great example).”
The idea of breeding turkeys and chickens together often crosses the minds of backyard poultry keepers. After all they are both birds, so it seems like they should be able to produce offspring. However, the reality is more complicated than it appears. While turkeys and chickens are biologically similar in some regards they are still separate species with key differences that make interbreeding quite challenging.
The Science Behind Turkey-Chicken Mating
Turkeys (Meleagris gallopavo) and chickens (Gallus gallus domesticus) are both members of the Phasianidae family, meaning they are related to pheasants and quails. But turkeys are of the Meleagris genus while chickens are Gallus, so they are distinctly different species.
Attempted turkey-chicken crosses have occurred, but the results indicate they have limited compatibility for successful breeding. According to avian expert Dr. Ashton Gray, no viable hybrids were produced in 12 separate studies looking at turkey-chicken interbreeding. Only a few fertile eggs resulted, with very few making it past early embryonic development.
The low hatchability of any eggs produced points to intrinsic biological barriers that prevent turkeys and chickens from easily interbreeding. The two species likely have differences in their reproductive anatomy and physiology that hinder effective mating and impede embryonic development. Their separate gene pools have diverged over evolutionary time, causing genetic incompatibility.
Behavioral Challenges To Mating
Another obstacle to turkey-chicken interbreeding is their contrasting mating behaviors. For starters, turkeys and chickens have differing courtship rituals that can prevent effective pair bonding between the species.
Turkeys rely heavily on flashy visual displays by the tom turkey to attract and mate with hens. Toms strut about with tail feathers fanned and bodies puffed up, also making distinctive gobbling noises. Chickens have more subtle mating behaviors mainly based on auditory cues and lack the dramatic physical displays of turkeys.
Even if mating occurs, the size difference is problematic. Tom turkeys are much larger and heavier than roosters, often crushing chicken hens during breeding attempts. For successful turkey-chicken reproduction, artificial insemination would be required to bypass their incongruous mating behaviors and anatomy.
Health And Welfare Concerns
Beyond reproduction issues, housing chickens and turkeys together poses health and welfare concerns for both species Diseases can spread between the birds, particularly blackhead disease Chickens act as carriers, unaffected by blackhead, but it is deadly for turkeys. Maintaining separate living spaces is crucial for disease control.
The larger size of turkeys also leads to bullying and competition over resources like food, water, and roosting areas. Chickens can become stressed and injured when housed with turkeys in confined spaces. Providing ample room plus multiple food, water and roosting areas can help reduce conflict. However, separate housing is preferable for their health and wellbeing.
Benefits Of Keeping Them Apart
Rather than forcing interbreeding, chicken and turkey keepers will find more benefits in raising the two species separately. Chickens and turkeys have different nutritional needs, growth rates, and habitat preferences that are easier to manage in separate flocks.
Turkeys help control flies, grasshoppers, and other large insect pests that chickens cannot, while chickens excell at removing ticks and smaller bugs. Allowing them to free range together under supervision retains pest control benefits without the issues of co-housing.
Keeping chickens and turkeys in their own dedicated housing also allows you to better monitor each flock and tend to their individual care needs more effectively. You can observe them more closely for injury, illness, or behavior issues and intervene promptly as required.
Rare Exceptions
While turkey-chicken hybrids are extremely uncommon, a few rare exceptions have been documented. In the 1960s, a probable turkey-chicken hybrid called a turkin was reported. It displayed a mix of traits from both species but unfortunately did not survive long after hatching.
Since the late 1990s, the rare production of a turkey-chicken hybrid has been achieved, but only through advanced artificial insemination techniques. The hybrids again showed a blend of parental traits, with low viability, but their creation demonstrates it is biologically possible even if highly impractical.
The Reality Of Keeping Turkeys And Chickens
When it comes down to it, attempting to mate turkeys and chickens or even housing them together takes much more effort than keeping them separately. Their inherent biological differences, contrasting needs, and potential for disease transmission make interbreeding and cohabitation far more trouble than it’s worth.
While turkeys and chickens may look similar to us, they are distinct species that evolved to fill different niches in nature. We should respect those differences rather than trying to force them to blend. Keeping chickens and turkeys requires meeting each of their needs optimally, something best achieved by raising them in separate flocks.
With dedicated housing customized to their requirements, plus attentive individual care, chickens and turkeys can both thrive under our stewardship. Keeping them apart rather than trying to mate them allows us to focus on their wellbeing. So while the idea of turkey-chicken hybrids is exciting, the reality does not live up to the hype. Though closely related, turkeys and chickens are incompatible for interbreeding and are healthier and happier living apart.
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Readability Score: 8.2
My Turkey Screwing my Chicken.
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