The Royal Palm is a strikingly attractive and small-sized turkey variety. They are white with a sharply contrasting, metallic black edging on the feathers. The saddle is black and 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 on 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 deep pink shanks and toes, light brown eyes, and black beards.
The first known bird in America to have the Royal 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 1920's.
This bird was a tom, and he bred it to off-colored bronze (actually Black Winged Bronze) hens from similar crosses. He got BWB toms and RP hens. He took the RP-colored F1 hens and mated back to their sire, the original RP tom, to develop the first large flock of true breeding Royal Palms. Others soon followed suit.
Poult color/pattern at hatch is yellow downed with or without a single black stripe going down its back.
Standard adult weights: Toms - 22 pounds, Hens - 12 pounds.
Homozygous recessive genotype: (b'b' cgcg nn for males and b'b' cgcg n- for females) Black winged bronze base with gray and Narragansett genes. A true breeding variety.
Royal Palm poult color/pattern at hatch