Midget White Turkey: Breed Profile, Size, and Buying Guide

Author: Elliott Garber, DVM

The Midget White is the smallest recognized turkey breed, a compact white bird developed in the 1960s to bring the meaty, broad-breasted shape of a commercial market turkey down to a size a small farm can actually raise, breed, and eat. It carries white plumage, a bare red and pinkish head with a snood and wattles, a short black beard, and a body that looks like a full-size white turkey shrunk to scale. Mature toms usually run about 13 to 20 pounds and hens about 8 to 12 pounds, only a little heavier than the largest chickens. Unlike the industrial Broad Breasted White, the Midget White still mates naturally and hens will go broody and hatch their own poults, which is exactly why homesteaders and heritage-poultry keepers value it. It remains genuinely rare and is tracked as a conservation priority by The Livestock Conservancy. Below is what the breed is, where it came from, how it looks, how it performs, what to check before you buy, and how to keep records on the birds you raise.

What is a Midget White turkey?

The Midget White is a small white heritage turkey. The name is literal: it is white-feathered and it is small, the smallest of the standard turkey varieties. A mature tom is only a little heavier than the largest chickens, which is unusual for a domestic turkey and is the entire point of the breed.

It was created as a scaled-down table bird. In the 1960s, when commercial turkey production had moved almost entirely to very large Broad Breasted White stock, Dr. J. Robert Smyth at the University of Massachusetts Amherst set out to make a small, efficient white turkey that would fit a household oven and a small operation while keeping the broad, meaty carcass buyers wanted. By the breed’s documented history, it was bred largely from white commercial turkeys crossed with the Royal Palm, and although it resembles the earlier Beltsville Small White it comes from different lines.

If you are weighing turkey breeds against one another, the broader Creatures turkey species page is a good place to compare the Midget White with larger heritage varieties before you commit.

Origin and history

The Midget White began as a university research project rather than a farm tradition. Dr. Smyth’s goal at UMass Amherst was practical: a compact white market turkey small enough to be convenient, but still shaped like the commercial bird. The breed never took off commercially, because the poultry industry kept scaling up rather than down, and for years it hung on only in small numbers.

After Smyth’s work, the birds passed to Dr. Bernie Wentworth at the University of Wisconsin, who continued selecting them toward a bird proportioned like a commercial white turkey in miniature. That flock was dispersed in the mid-2000s, and since then the breed’s survival has depended on individual breeders and heritage-poultry keepers rather than any institution. The BBC reported in 2014 that the variety was thought by some to have nearly vanished before a population was located in Alabama, which gives a sense of how thin the numbers ran.

Two things follow from that history. First, the Midget White is a modern, deliberately engineered breed, not an old landrace, so its “heritage” standing rests on how it is raised (naturally mating, on range, slow growing) rather than on great age. Second, because it was maintained in small, scattered flocks, individual birds and lines can vary, which matters when you go to buy.

What a Midget White turkey looks like

The Midget White reads at a glance as a small white turkey built like a big one. The diagnostic features are consistent:

• White plumage. The body feathers are white. This is a white-feathered variety, which also means the dressed carcass has clean white pin feathers, historically a selling point for a table bird.
• Bare red to pinkish head. Like other turkeys, the head and upper neck are largely unfeathered, showing red and pink skin, with a snood over the beak and red wattles at the throat. On a displaying tom the head can flush and the snood extends.
• Short black beard. Toms carry the typical turkey beard, a tuft of coarse black bristles on the chest.
• Compact, broad-breasted body. The whole animal is proportioned like a commercial white turkey scaled down, with a broad breast for its size rather than the lean, upright build of some older heritage types.

Size is the headline trait. Reported mature weights vary by source and by line, but toms generally fall around 13 to 20 pounds and hens around 8 to 12 pounds. Some flocks run at the smaller end (toms near 13 pounds, hens 8 to 10). Either way, this is a turkey that a single household can raise, breed, and cook without industrial-scale space or equipment.

How the breed performs

Performance is where the Midget White earns its keep on a small farm, and it comes down to three things: it reproduces itself, it grows slowly and naturally, and it has a strong reputation on the table.

It mates naturally. This is the single most important production fact about the breed and the clearest line between it and the commercial turkey. The industry-standard Broad Breasted White cannot reproduce by natural mating and is maintained by artificial insemination. The Midget White mates naturally, and The Livestock Conservancy specifically recognizes it as one of the naturally mating color varieties. That means a small keeper can hatch next year’s birds from this year’s flock instead of buying poults every season.

Hens set and raise poults. Midget White hens are widely reported to go broody readily and to hatch and raise their own young, which further reduces reliance on incubators and heat lamps. Combined with natural mating, this makes the breed close to self-sustaining in a way industrial turkeys are not.

It grows slowly, like a heritage bird. The Livestock Conservancy’s heritage-turkey definition requires natural mating, a long productive outdoor life, and a slow growth rate, with heritage turkeys reaching market weight in roughly 28 weeks rather than the few months an industrial bird takes. The Midget White fits that pattern. You are trading fast, cheap weight gain for a bird that can live and breed on pasture for years. Under that definition, breeding hens can stay productive for several years and toms for a few, though as always your own management, climate, and predators set the real ceiling.

Flavor reputation. The Midget White has a strong reputation as an eating bird and has done well in heritage-turkey taste comparisons. Flavor is subjective and depends heavily on how a bird is raised and finished, so treat “best-tasting” claims as enthusiast and taste-test reputation rather than a laboratory fact. What is fair to say is that a slow-grown, pasture-raised heritage turkey eats differently from a fast-grown supermarket bird, and the Midget White is prized for that.

Temperament and handling

Keepers commonly describe Midget Whites as relatively calm and friendly, and their small size makes them easier to handle, catch, and house than a 30-plus-pound commercial tom. We flag the temperament description as keeper and breeder observation rather than a formally studied trait. As with any turkey, disposition varies with how much the birds are handled, and a tom in breeding condition behaves differently from hens and young birds. Turkeys are also more weather-sensitive as poults than mature birds, so brooding management matters early on.

Housing and care

A Midget White is still a turkey and needs the basics done well: dry, draft-free, predator-proof shelter, clean water at all times, and enough clean ground or pasture to range without churning it to mud. Their smaller size lowers the space and feed bill compared with a giant commercial bird, but it does not remove the need for good management.

Shelter and range. Provide secure night housing against predators and roosting space off the ground. Because heritage turkeys are bred to live outdoors, access to clean range or a well-managed run suits them, with shade and shelter from wind and wet.

Feeding. Poults need a high-protein game-bird or turkey starter, then a grower and eventually a maintenance or breeder ration appropriate to their stage. Turkeys have higher protein needs than chickens, especially when young. Provide grit if they are on range, and keep water clean and unfrozen.

Health. Standard poultry husbandry applies: keep housing clean and dry, watch for signs of respiratory illness and parasites, and follow biosecurity to reduce disease risk. A well-known hazard is blackhead disease (histomoniasis), which turkeys are highly susceptible to and which is linked to the parasite carried by the cecal worm often associated with chickens, so many keepers avoid running turkeys on ground recently used by chickens. Defer diagnosis and treatment decisions to a veterinarian who can see your birds and knows your area.

Keeping clear records of hatch dates, weights, broody and hatching success, and any health events makes the breed easier to manage and to improve, and it is exactly the kind of thing a small breeding flock benefits from tracking year over year.

Conservation status: rare, and worth being precise about

The Midget White is genuinely uncommon, and you will see it described as a conservation priority. It is worth stating the status carefully rather than repeating an out-of-date label.

The breed rose to attention as a rare heritage turkey and was historically flagged at the most urgent end of the old American Livestock Breeds Conservancy scale. On The Livestock Conservancy’s current Conservation Priority List, the Midget White is tracked among the naturally mating turkey color varieties that fall under the “Watch” tier rather than a separately listed “Critical” breed, reflecting how these smaller-population varieties are grouped and counted. It has also been included in Slow Food’s Ark of Taste as a food worth preserving.

The honest takeaway for a buyer is not the exact tier label but the practical reality behind it: this is a low-population breed maintained by a relatively small community of dedicated keepers, so genuine, well-bred stock can be limited and worth seeking out from people who know their lines. Supporting careful breeders is, in effect, part of the conservation effort.

Cost and availability

There is no single reliable public price for a Midget White, and we will not invent one. Poults from hatcheries and started or breeding birds from private keepers are sold at prices that vary widely by season, region, age, and quality, and heritage poults generally cost more than commercial ones because they are produced in far smaller numbers.

Availability is the bigger practical hurdle. Because the breed is rare and largely kept in small flocks, supply is uneven: poults may only be offered in a short spring window, and quality breeding stock can require getting on a waiting list with a specific breeder. If you are shopping, expect to plan ahead, to buy from small-scale sources rather than off a shelf, and to ask questions about the birds’ lines and health.

Because genuine stock appears in small windows, a saved listing alert (in the hub below) is often the most practical way to catch birds when a breeder posts them, and the Creatures breeder directory is a good place to find people raising the breed.

Buying considerations

Because the breed is rare, deliberately engineered, and maintained in scattered lines, buy on evidence and on the health of the flock, not just on a “heritage” label.

• Confirm it is a true Midget White. Small white turkeys get sold under loose names. Look for the compact, broad-breasted-in-miniature build and mature weights in the expected range, and ask the breeder directly about the line’s origin.
• Ask about natural mating and hatching. The whole value of the breed is that it reproduces itself. Ask whether the flock mates naturally and whether hens hatch and raise poults, and choose stock from birds that actually do.
• Check health and biosecurity. Ask how the birds are housed, whether they share ground with chickens (blackhead risk), and what the breeder’s disease-prevention practices are.
• Buy from someone who keeps records. A breeder who can tell you hatch dates, weights, and hatching success is telling you the flock is being managed and improved, not just kept.
• Plan around availability. Expect seasonal poults and possible waiting lists rather than year-round supply.

You can browse current turkey listings on the Creatures marketplace and, because supply is thin, set a listing alert so you hear about birds as they are posted.

Midget White versus other small turkeys

Two comparisons come up often. The Beltsville Small White is an older USDA-developed small white turkey that the Midget White resembles but does not descend from directly; the Beltsville is also rare and heritage-classed. The Broad Breasted White is the industrial supermarket turkey: much larger, faster growing, and unable to mate naturally, so it is not a heritage breed and cannot reproduce itself on a homestead. If you want a small white turkey that you can breed year after year from your own flock, the Midget White is the one built for that job. If you simply want maximum meat in one season and will buy new poults each year, a commercial bird does that, at the cost of self-sufficiency and flavor reputation.

Frequently asked questions

How big does a Midget White turkey get?
It is the smallest standard turkey variety. Mature toms generally weigh about 13 to 20 pounds and hens about 8 to 12 pounds, only a little more than the largest chickens. Exact weights vary by line and by how the birds are raised.

Can Midget White turkeys reproduce naturally?
Yes. Unlike the commercial Broad Breasted White, which must be bred by artificial insemination, the Midget White mates naturally, and hens will go broody and hatch their own poults. That is the breed’s main advantage for small keepers.

Are Midget White turkeys good for beginners and small homesteads?
They are well suited to small farms and homesteads because of their small size, natural reproduction, and manageable temperament. Beginners can do well with them given secure housing, a proper high-protein turkey ration for poults, clean water, and attention to blackhead risk around chickens.

Is the Midget White a heritage turkey?
Yes, under The Livestock Conservancy’s definition, which requires natural mating, a long productive outdoor life, and slow growth. It is a modern breed developed in the 1960s, so its heritage standing comes from how it is raised rather than from great age.

How rare is the Midget White?
It is a genuinely low-population breed maintained by a small community of keepers and tracked as a conservation priority by The Livestock Conservancy, where it sits among the naturally mating turkey varieties in the “Watch” tier. Good breeding stock can be limited and is worth sourcing carefully.

Do Midget White turkeys taste good?
They have a strong reputation as a table bird and have performed well in heritage-turkey taste comparisons. Flavor depends heavily on how a bird is raised and finished, so treat “best-tasting” claims as enthusiast reputation rather than a measured fact.

Do this next on Creatures

Whether you are researching the breed, hunting for genuine poults, or already raising Midget Whites, Creatures is the records, marketplace, and directory layer to do it in one place.