when can you tell if a turkey is a girl or boy?

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TammyP

TammyP

Songster
10 Years
Oct 2, 2009
130
6
146
SW Wisconsin
At what age can you tell the sex of the bird?

Currently I have one BB Bronze and one Bourbon red...both almost two weeks old. The bronze one is supposed to be our thanksgiving dinner and the bourbon red is going to be our pet. I'd have gotten more of them but that's all that was left at the farmstore. In about 4 weeks they are supposed to get in another batch and I'm going to try and get a few more Bourbons to maybe start my own flock someday.
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The Bronze wings are close to the body just like my chicks wings, however, the bourbon red one almost seems like it has two sets of wings...lol.... one outer pair that sticks out away from the body and the inner one is close to the body. Perhaps the bronze is the gal and the bourbon is the boy?

Any suggestions? Anyone have pics of their youngins and know what sex they turned out to be later on?

My camera is not working or I'd take a pic.....

Thanks for the replies.
~Tammy
 
The people that I bought my turkeys from told me that the knob at the top of their beak is how to tell the difference in poults. If It is bigger then it will be a boy and if it is small it will be a girl. These people are a local hatchery type business so I picked out my turkeys based on that. I hope they were right. By know I talking about that round thing above the beak.

Let me add that I am a newbie at turkey poults or turkeys at all. I just finally got mine a week ago but have been gathering info on here and those I know in person about turkeys.
 
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I read a turkey raising book that said you can tell by looking at their eyes. The hens look nice and toms look mean-compared to one another. They have to be a few days old to notice a difference. It says if you don't see a difference you may be holding two of the same gender.
I got 3 bourbon reds with the hopes of 1 tom and 2 hens....we'll see how selections turn out!
 
Sexing 2 week old is only a guess. Some things increase your odds of being right. You still are always going to have some at 6 months old suprise you. Oh, I thought that was a hen!!!! I do think many times the hens just look more feminine. There head is more triagle. The Toms have a square head if viewed from the top. Some of my 8 week old turkeys are getting some color to the head like a male. What I think are hens have more tiny fuzz on the top of the head. Tust me here it is only a guess. Never sale someone a turkey sexed when they are young. You will have someone ticked off at you.

This site I like that shows you how to sex turkeys will not come up for me. But this is helpful. http://webcache.googleusercontent.c...d=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&source=www.google.com
 
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When I chose my turkey chick I went by the size of its legs, I wanted a Tom so I chose a chick with thicker legs than the rest... he turned out to be a Tom, but did keep me guessing for a very long time, as his bump on his nose stayed rather small until he was a fair few months old,
 

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