Hmmm....the ones they have at my feed store are a different white turkey, they say they are from Holland and their plummage is white.
White Hollands are an older meat breed, from before the commercial broad-breasted strains took over. They
do breed naturally and are not grotesque
Basically anything pure white has generally been selected for meat conformation and would be a good choice if you want a meaty carcass. Plain bronze turkeys have also generally got meat-selected characteristics in their heritage (unless you are TRULY getting WILD turkeys that have not experienced selection for anything other than health and breeding ability) because really if you are breeding turkeys you're either gonna select for color or for meatiness and there ain't all that mcuh color-selecting you can do with bronzes ;P
Whereas anything fancy-colored has almost always been selected for color NOT for meat conformation, some lines of Bourbon Reds being allegedly an exception (I have no experience with this other than the only BRs that I have personally seen the carcasses from have *not* been especially meat-conformed). Royal Palms are seriously
not bred for meat conformation, you will get a much lower %meat from the carcass weight than you would on other turkeys, although of course what you do get will still be tasty.
So if you want a good amount of eatin' off your turkeys, rather than a scrawny specimen that is much more bone and fat than meat, I would suggest considering anything-pure-white or most pure bronzes either.
(I say "most" because while wild turkeys are not necessarily the meatiest, I would tend to wonder how purely wild-turkey the "wild" turkeys your feedstore is selling really are. It seems to be pretty common around here, anyhow, to sell standard bronze turkeys as wild, even though they're not. I am NOT talking about the modern commercial broad-breasted bronzes, I am talking about heritage-type bronzes which have Depression-era meat bird genetics but will still breed naturally adn go broody and all that)
If you want bourbon reds or anything other fancy colored I'd suggest trying to find someone who's got adult birds (on the hoof or in the freezer) FROM THE SAME SOURCE and see whether their birds would suit your needs conformation-wise.
(I wasted a buncha feed and space on some Narragansetts last spring, from a source who swore to me that yeah they were plenty meaty. Yahhhhh.... nope. Mostly bone and fat. Still tasty, but they ate just as much as my heritage bronzes and beltsville small whites, for a lot less meat offa the bird. Sigh)
Good luck, have fun,
Pat
