Turkeys & virgin births

Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports
1

Here is the column link The Address: http://www.straightdope.com/columns/991008.html

What isn’t explained fully is just HOW does this occur. Are the turkeys using sperm from a previous mating or what?. Is it possible that a turkey that never mated gives birth?

2

Lets try that link again
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/991008.html

3

There’s one other way, minus sex, for turkeys to get pregnant… I used to work for a turkey processing company which bred turkeys also. Rather than rely on nature, a group of guys performed Artificial Insemination on the females. This is pretty normal across the industry for captive flocks. Never got a straight answer on how they gathered the sperm, but understand it was a manual process. However bad your job might be, this would have to be worse…

4

I would think that in order for this to happen the egg probally never split the dna so it contains all the chromozones <sp>, not 1/2. and produces a clone. Just a guess.

5

This being the third virgin birth discussion, it might be worthwhile referring to:

http://www.straightdope.com/ubb/Forum1/HTML/000247.html

and

http://www.newscientist.com/nsplus/insight/clone/virgin.html