Parthenogenesis in Eggs of Beltsville Small White Turkeys

EXPERIMENTS at the Agricultural Research Center, Beltsville, Maryland, over the past four years have repeatedly demonstrated that parthenogenesis occurs in infertile turkey eggs. The original observations made in 1952 revealed that 156 or 16.7 percent of 934 infertile turkey eggs laid 57 to 215 days following removal of the males showed an abortive development upon being incubated. In over 95 percent of the instances encountered, the development consisted solely of an unorganized growth of embryonic cells with no evidence of either blood or embryo formation. Since these initial observations, further tests have been conducted which substantiate the earlier findings. In these subsequent tests only virgin turkey females were used, and with few exceptions were separated from their immature male pen mates before 6 weeks of age. The tests conducted in 1953 as well as results to be reported in this study showed that more than 22.2 percent of all infertile …