Chicken raising a turkey poult

[amynrichie]

My question is regarding my Polish hen raising the Bourbon Red poult she hatched. I understand that sometimes the young will want to associate with whatever species raised them. Is this always true? Is this turkey destined to be a chicken? Will he/she want to mate with the other turkeys when mature?

What is your experience with "Inter-species" families?

 

[chooks4life]

My question is regarding my Polish hen raising the Bourbon Red poult she hatched. I understand that sometimes the young will want to associate with whatever species raised them. Is this always true? Is this turkey destined to be a chicken? Will he/she want to mate with the other turkeys when mature?

What is your experience with "Inter-species" families?

That's a lovely picture, by the way.

My experience with interspecies families is that it's only a problem later on down the track. Initially neither the turkey hens and chicken hens were surprised or taken aback by the different-sounding, different-moving chicks they suddenly had, but did well. The turkeys knew they were turkeys and the chickens knew they were chickens and each separated into associating with their own species once grown. Even as chicks they didn't hang out so much nor interact with their other-species 'siblings'. There were no attempts at cross species matings.

A few generations down the track, neither the turkey hens nor the chicken hens were having it. They refused chicks as soon as the hatching eggs made the wrong sort of peeping, but before that they'd progressively left each clutch of wrong-species chicks younger, and younger, and younger than they'd ever 'abandoned' a clutch before. When allowed to go back to raising their own species they once again mothered normally. They'd twigged to the deception, lol.

But the offspring from the adoptive mothers, after a few generations, were more likely to view the other species as part of their hierarchy so I had more issues between roosters and toms, roosters and turkey hens, and one tom turkey became sexually attracted to chicken hens and I had to cull him after numerous near misses with me hastily retrieving a hen from his intentions. The problem was some hens now also viewed turkey toms as potential mates so they'd 'sit' for them which before had never been the case.

All in all, I will likely continue occasionally using certain chicken hen mothers for turkey poults as overall they're better mothers for them but the issue with the turkey hens continues until I find turkey hens who are better mothers. The family lines I've had so far had very little or no experience with rearing their own clutches as they were artificially incubated so they made terrible mothers, trampling young and just not taking the best care of them, but they stressed out when they had nothing to show for laying a clutch. Bit of an ongoing issue for me in that area. Not just for me either, I had people wanting to buy tiny banty hens who had great mothering skills for turkey poults.

Best wishes.

 

[gander007]

I had a goose that was raised with ducks many years ago and when I got her a gander she ran from him but after a month or so she was hooked on him for the next five years ............

 

[amynrichie]

Thank you both for your insight. I really appreciate it! I guess we will just see how things go.