Broody turkey hen with chicken eggs! Sheesh! ***new ???? p 9***

[freemotion]

One more little factoid to make your day more interesting....the turkeys you find in the supermarket are produced through artificial insemination. They CANNOT breed naturally, so there is no point in buying them for your homestead flock if you want to ultimately raise your own turkeys.

Bourbon Red and Midget Whites did well in a taste test, so I looked for both these breeds, and found the BR's nearby. I also got a couple of Narragansetts that are a more local heritage breed, thinking I had myself a nice little flock with one tom and three hens. Turned out the opposite was true. The two Narragansetts were delicious.

 

[big brown horse]

Midget whites, is that a politically correct term? Are they really smaller than the average turkey you see at the fair?

I wouldn't mind a smaller turkey or two.

 

[justusnak]

I have a Blue Slate turkey hen, she is a VERY good momma. Last year she put me on the wall 3 times....I was just trying to put feed in there for her! Jeesh, the ingrate!!
I have a few Banty Cochin Frizzles...and last spring one hen went broody. Being that I didnt want any more bantys...and I couldnt break this little hen from her broodiness....I finally gave in, and gave her a turkey egg! It was so funy to watch her sit on top of that egg, and slide from one side to the other..tipping. Finally I made her nest deeper, so she could settle down on the egg. She raised that little turkey for several weeks afterwards. I finally had to take the turkey out of the bantam pen...when it was stepping on the other bantams. Boy, a little rooster can get pretty upset, when stepped on by a 2 ft tall "baby" Good luck with your hen...I hope you have LOTS of fuzzies in a few weeks...and she still lays well for you in the spring!

 

[ohiofarmgirl]

good luck with your broody turkey, Free!

she sounds a bit like our BR gal, Runner, who tried so darn hard to hatch a clutch several times last year and it just didnt work. she is laying like the dickens right now but we wont let her set - too cold for babies just yet.

re:

the turkeys you find in the supermarket are produced through artificial insemination

just so's ya know.. we have all heritage turkeys b/c we love turkeys and turkey babies but there are just some things i aint a-gonna do. AI for turkeys in one of them.. not to mention um.. that is... getting 'what is required' no way, no how, no thank you.

i think we are up to 19 lovely BR turks now... and hoping to get midget whites and blue slates in the spring. yay turkeys!

 

[freemotion]

Nineteen? And just what is your threshold before you have a turkey dinner?

 

[ohiofarmgirl]

i think we were about at that point.. until we realized how much we could sell a breeding pair for! now we are givin' them the luxury treatment! we were going to list some on CL this week but then all this stupid snow showed up.

but really...

we are totally keeping our 'core' flock of TurkZilla (the tom) and our mommas: TurkeyMomma, Bramble, and Runner... and the others are just now big enough to harvest. but some of the jakes are so darn big we'll end up keeping at least one of those as well! one is so big we call him The Ostrich.

we are mad for the turks - they are ridiculous.

 

[freemotion]

BBH, Midget Whites are a little on the modern side, but still can breed naturally. The are smaller than a "normal" turkey but bigger than a chicken.

OFG, I watched our cows get "bred" through AI when I was a kid and it was a pretty boring procedure. I watched a stallion being "collected" a few years later and all I can say is

Only heritage turkeys for me, thankyouverymuch!

How much can you sell a breeding pair for? I do see the price going up, but not always. The guy I got my two from is selling a group of blue slates for about $25 each as a group of five or six I think. I was thinking of getting them, but I remembered seeing them when I picked up my BR's two years ago (full grown but the tom has gotten bigger, so youngish then, I think) and he lists this group as a year old. They are at least 3 years old by my math......not everyone is as good at math, apparently!

 

[freemotion]

I have a Blue Slate turkey hen, she is a VERY good momma. Last year she put me on the wall 3 times....I was just trying to put feed in there for her! Jeesh, the ingrate!!
I have a few Banty Cochin Frizzles...and last spring one hen went broody. Being that I didnt want any more bantys...and I couldnt break this little hen from her broodiness....I finally gave in, and gave her a turkey egg! It was so funy to watch her sit on top of that egg, and slide from one side to the other..tipping. Finally I made her nest deeper, so she could settle down on the egg. She raised that little turkey for several weeks afterwards. I finally had to take the turkey out of the bantam pen...when it was stepping on the other bantams. Boy, a little rooster can get pretty upset, when stepped on by a 2 ft tall "baby" Good luck with your hen...I hope you have LOTS of fuzzies in a few weeks...and she still lays well for you in the spring!

Funny story! Wish you had a pic of that banty hen on the ginormous egg, that must've been a hoot and a half!

Your BS hen attacked you??? Is this what I have to look forward to? I caught the tom going after a chicken hen a time or two. I hope he doesn't accelerate in this behavior. I do NOT want to be putting up fencing and building a new shed for two non-producing birds! Grrrr!

 

[me&thegals]

Heritage breeds will go broody, not the broad-breasted white or bronze modern frankenturkeys.

I have a pair of Bourbon Reds.

My Bourbon hen is doing the exact same thing, only she is shoved face first into a small hen nest. Yikes!

 

[FarmerDenise]

We had a silkie hen hatch and raise a few turkey chicks one year. A friend had accidentally mowed over a turkey nest in his field killing the hen. He brought the eggs ove to us and we tried to incubate them in a box with a heating pad and damp towels. Then our silkie went broodie and we slipped four eggs under her. she hatched two of them. The other chickens killed one of the chicks, when it got out of the chick pen. the little turkey chick learned chicken. It learned to stay away from the big hens. It cold fly to the top of the hen house. It sure was a funny sight to see this big turkey baby try to get under the little silkie hen. When we eventually put it back with the wild flock, it was very confused, it didn't quite understand turkey. The hens in the wild flock were very patient though and finally convince the chick to join their flock. Months later we would see the flock and call: "here baby, here baby" and one young turkey would start to come toward us.