Due to a number of fake, photoshopped images going viral on social media recently claiming to be a peacock turkey hybrid, we have seen a spike in the number of people reaching out to ask about real peacock turkey hybrids.
Due to seeing so many people reaching out about it, we have decided to publish this dedicated article on the subject to try and help as many of our readers as possible.
Our hope is that we will be able to put a few common myths that we see people talking about to rest and offer a more realistic look at the possibility of peacock turkey hybrids.
In addition to this, there are a huge number of fake photographs on social media pretending to be a wide range of different hybrid animals and it seems this peacock turkey hybrid is just the latest addition to the craze.
In addition to there being a large amount of fake photographs online for various animals, there is also a large amount of incorrect information online regarding the various hybrids and although we have done our best to fact check the information in this article, it may be from an incorrect source.
That said, real peacock turkey hybrids are extremely rare anyway with very few breeders even claiming to have been able to produce them.
Can A Peacock And A Turkey Breed?
It is very common for birds of a different species that are housed together to breed with each other but most of the time, no fertile eggs are produced so no chicks hatch.
That said, there are some very rare situations where a peacock and a turkey have bred with the chromosomes lining up correctly to produce a fertile egg with the egg actually hatching.
Although some breeders do actively try to produce these hybrids, it is so rare that a viable egg will be produced that the majority of breeders quickly give up.
On top of this, even if a fertile egg is produced, it is rare that it will actually hatch often resulting in a waste of time and money for the breeder when they could have just bred their peacocks or turkeys with each other instead.
The few peacock turkey hybrid chicks that have hatched have had a wide range of different appearances due to taking characteristics from the peacock and the turkey.
It is very rare that they have the beautiful peacock tail feathers too with most of the chicks produced from this pairing looking nothing like the popular fake photoshop images.
How Long Do Peacock Turkey Hybrids Live?
To date, there has been no peacock turkey hybrids that have managed to live for more than four year with most of them tending to die before they reach the one year mark.
Even experienced breeders who breed a wide range of different types of birds have all failed to keep a peacock turkey hybrid alive for more than four years.
It is not known why this is due to there being no obvious health problems with the peacock turkey hybrid chicks that these breeders produce.
This is very common for hybrid birds no matter the parent species though and it is very rare for any of the hybrid pairings to actually live for a long period of time.
This is where the ethical question comes in as to why people breed peacock turkey hybrids and if it is right to do so.
The main reason that people breed these birds is for the challenge due to successfully producing peacock turkey hybrid chicks being so difficult.
Although the birds tend not to live long, they don’t have any obvious health issues and often have a good quality of life too.
Can Peacock Turkey Hybrids Produce Fertile Eggs?
No peacock turkey hybrids have been produced that have been able to produce fertile eggs themselves with all peacock turkey hybrids produced to date having been sterile and infertile.
This can be common when mixing different bird types and the odds of correctly having the chromosomes line up to produce a peacock turkey hybrid are minimal so getting everything to line up perfectly for a fertile bird is so small it isn’t even worth actively trying for.
This is another common reason that the bird breeders who try to produce peacock turkey hybrids often give up quickly as it is not only difficult to create a peacock turkey hybrid but producing a peacock turkey hybrid that can produce fertile eggs has never actually been done.
This results in additional time and money having to be put into the peacock turkey hybrid project with the odds of success being minimal.
Breeding birds, especially birds that technically come from different families of birds is very different from breeding dogs.
Many dog breeders who try to mix dog breeds do so to try and produce strong origin lines so that in a few years, they are able to breed the original hybrids to produce pups.
With peacock turkey hybrids not being fertile, building up the original breeding pairs of actual peacock turkey hybrids rather than pairing a turkey with a peacock has never been done.
What Animals Are Commonly Mistaken For Peacock Turkey Hybrids?
Although the majority of peacock turkey hybrid photographs on social media are fake, some of them are actually of different bird species that have been mislabeled.
The two most common bird breeds to be mistaken for a peacock turkey hybrid are ocellated turkeys and barefaced currasows.
Many of the photographs that you see on social media claiming to be a peacock turkey hybrid that are real birds and not photoshops are actually ocellated turkeys.
These are their own, unique breed of turkey that are purebred and have no peacock or any other type of bird species in their bloodline.
The barefaced currasow is also sometimes mislabeled as a peacock turkey hybrid but it is much rarer for this to happen than with the ocellated turkey due to the barefaced currasow not really being as eye catching.
In the age of clickbait and eye catching images on thumbnails to get viewers, the ocellated turkey is defiantly the better, more eye catching bird for this hoax.
Conclusion
That brings our article going over peacock turkey hybrids to an end. We hope that we have been able to help solve any curiosities that you may have had about the bird. With more and more people faking photographs or using other bird species to claim that the animal in their photograph is a peacock turkey hybrid, we only expect the number of people reaching out and asking about a peacock turkey hybrid to increase over the coming months so wanted to get an article online as soon as possible.
