Wild Turkeys are spectacular birds, coming in an array of colours and sporting a wide range of eye-popping appendages. The wattle—the colourful flap of naked pores and skin hanging from a turkey’s head—will be the most acquainted characteristic to people. Each it and the fleshy progress on a male’s brow and invoice, referred to as a snood, flip good hues of pink, crimson, white, and blue when males show in the course of the breeding season.
However along with all that flashy flesh, there’s one other curious trait that turkeys tout: their beards. Turkey beards are plumes of darkish brown or black feathers—extra hair-like than a typical feather—that protrude from the chicken’s chest. “For those who had it in your hand, it has the consistency of a miniature horsetail,” says Gary Norman, a retired gamebird biologist at Virginia Division of Sport and Inland Fisheries.
Whereas all toms—grownup male turkeys—have beards, almost 10 p.c of hens even have one, albeit a a lot stubbier, wispier model. Why just some females have beards is just not recognized, however male beards are believed to be yet one more instrument for mate choice. They will “point out dominance and well being,” says Kelsey Sullivan, a gamebird specialist with the Maine Division of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife.
Turkey beards begin sprouting when children are simply 5 months previous and proceed to develop all through a chicken’s life, at a charge of almost 5 inches a 12 months. This permits biologists a rough solution to age males: One-year-old birds often have beards measuring a number of inches, whereas older males can have beards within the double digits. “Something over 10 inches is a very nice beard,” says Matt DiBona, a wildlife biologist on the Nationwide Turkey Wildlife Federation (NTWF). The longest particular person beard size recorded on NTWF’s web site is 11.75 inches, and a few toms would possibly develop two, three, and even 13 separate beards. In these uncommon conditions, most are simply brief, wispy feathers with a single dominant cluster; nonetheless, one spectacular tom grew a number of beards that measured a whopping sum of 26.5 inches.
Turkeys can lose their beards a number of methods. Beard rot, brought on by vitamin deficiency, could outcome of their beards shearing off. Longer beards also can snap from the heavy weight of snow and ice that collects on them throughout winter. Fraying from being dragged on the bottom can also be a difficulty. In reality, terrain closely influences beard size: Turkeys inhabiting rocky terrain could have general shorter beards than people foraging throughout flat, sandy floor, says Norman.
The abundance of bearded hens varies by area, maybe affected by earlier conservation efforts to get well Wild Turkeys, says DiBona. Within the mid-1900s, wildlife biologists trapped turkeys and moved them throughout state boundaries to revive severely depleted turkey populations as a consequence of searching and habitat loss. Wild Turkeys sharply rebounded, inhabiting each state in the US aside from Alaska, and peaked at 7 million birds by the early 2000s.
If biologists trapped the next share of bearded females to reintroduce elsewhere, then some new populations might have extra bearded hens as a result of that founding group of breeders had extra beard genes. “That in itself might be one of many driving forces on the prevalence of bearded hens,” says Mark Hatfield, a wildlife biologist with NTWF.
Regardless, bearded females nonetheless make up only a small share of the entire Wild Turkey inhabitants, so should you see a chicken with a protracted, full beard, you might be most likely secure calling it a male. However to make certain, you should use different diagnostic clues—just like the sharp spurs on males’ legs, used to compete with different males, or the feathers solely on high of females’ heads—to know whether or not you’ve acquired a gobbler or a hen in your arms.