Hi Steve, Let me first tell you my family has a saying, or maybe its mostly me.
The only good pet is one you can eat. . Most of the animals I raise end up on the dinner table.
Not to say we don't have a couple of true pets.
A bird with white feathers has a cleaner looking skin than a bird with colored feathers after processing.
At the quill a dark feather has a tar like ( I don't know what it's called) gooey substance that stays on and in the skin.
To me you just don't get as clean an appearance as you do with white birds.
That's what I thought you were talking about, but wasn't quite sure.
The White Pheasant is a meat bird just as the Jumbo RN Pheasant. They are not usually found on the shooting preserves since their sizes can be up to a pound heavier, and a slower flier. These birds are usually found as a speciality item normally in Stromberg's Chickens.
I don't think you are going to see much of a difference in the skin color once the bird has been dressed, unless you plan on putting the birds on a milk diet.
The RN hens have a cream color breast feather compared to the RN cock. Once dressed both basically look the same in skin color. The same can be held true on the color of the breast meat. I have had the RN hens breast (skinned) a cream color to almost chicken cutlet color and the same with the RN cocks. I have had it where both the RN hens and cocks had their skinned breast a darker color, almost as the color of the domesticated turkey legs (dark meat). Whether the meat was a light cream color or dark color the taste was the same.
I believe it has all to do with a very strict diet plan and keeping the birds in the same environment as Frank Perdue and Tyson chicken farms.
There is no way possible to even think about running a pheasant operation here in WV like a Perdue or Tyson chicken farm, unless
all pheasants were reclassified as poultry, and taken off the wild game bird list and placed under the jurisdiction of WV Dept of AG.
Steve
Pheasant Hollow Farm