NINE FIGURESI n 1949 several abnormal turkey (Meleagris gallopavo) embryos were found in a routine check of unpipped eggs laid by untrapnested F, hens from a cross of Black-winged bronze male with Palm females. Because of similarities to a lethal in the domestic fowl that had been called crooked neck dwarf (Asmundson, '45) the same name was given to this mutation.I n 1950 two male and four female descendants of the 1949 carrier birds produced some crooked necked progeny and other related males and females also produced lethal embryos. The following year ('51) crooked neck dwarf embryos were also obtained from an unselected strain of Broad Breasted Bronze (table 1).The ancestors of the crooked neck dwarf embryos came originally from five different turkey breeders and included birds of four plumage patterns. The nonbronze birds had all segregated out of Bronze stock within a pear or two of the time they were received from the breeders. Two of the strains were Broad Breasted Bronze and unrelated or only distantly related. The other three stocks were related, having all originated from a selected strain of Bronze. All three stocks had been crossed with Broad Breasted Bronze. It therefore seems probable that the Broad Breasted Bronze contributed the lethal gene. However the evidence does not exclude the possibility, (1) that the mutation occurred so long ago that it would be expected in both Broad Breasted and nonbroad breasted strains nor, (2) that the mutation has occurred independently among the ancestors of the birds found to be carriers of the gene in 1949 and 1951.
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