Recent content by Lagerdogger

Enjoy the pecking. At least they are not afraid of you!

It's also interesting that your eggs are not hatching at the same time. Does each hen have it's own nest, or are they sharing. If they are sharing, then some hens may be laying in the nest while another is incubating. Then when the earliest eggs hatch, the hen leaves the nest and abandons the...

Look at the breast feathers. See how they have white edges? Hen. Narragansett. Looks pretty pure to me.

Hate to be the voice of negativity, but since you asked, you probably should not have picked it up. First, I'm pretty sure it's against the law to take a wild turkey home, and second, there is a pretty good chance that the hen mother was not too far away. After all, if it was as young as you...

I really like red bronzes which are simply the cross between standard bronze and bourbon red. Another really attractive bird with a name I can never remember is black crossed with bourbon red. These birds can't be shown as standard breeds at the fair, but if you want pets, you can do whatever...

Blacks, slates, and chocolates all have the basic black pattern that your poult seems to have. The difference is the color of the dark parts, which are almost black in blacks, brown in chocolates, and blue in blue slates (how's that for scientific). Looks like it might be a chocolate?

Wild turkeys are basically undomesticated standard bronzes. Bourbon reds are st bronze with two red genes. This cross will produce red bronzes. Blue slates are black based with a single dominant blue gene. All offspring will appear black based, and half will get the blue gene, so half will...

Here is why your bronze cross blacks all look black. There are three base colors in turkeys. Black, bronze, and black-winged bronze, written as B, b, and b1. The black base, B, is dominant. The bronze base is recessive to black, and black-winged bronze is recessive to both. Genes come in...

Maybe a picture with better light that showed more of the turkey would be useful?

Wait and see.

If your tom is still interested in mating after the poults hatch, he can be a problem. He can get to close to the hen and step on the poults.Most of the time this is not a problem but I have had to separate toms that were too aggressive towards females after hatching.

You really need to get a picture from the front. The snood could have been bitten off by another turkey or cut off trying to push through a fence. The caruncles appear hen-like, but that can be a function of age. Probably your best clue will be if the breast feathers have light edges or dark...

Wait until they are 12 weeks old?

Sounds broody. The hissing is a very familiar noise.

They ship fine. You just want to make sure that they are less than about two weeks old. Last year I ordered 15 eggs from a private source, and did not specify the two week limit. She wrote the date on all the eggs. I hatched 7 of 8 less than two weeks old, but only 1of 7 older. They were...