how lond after mating do turkey hens lay there eggs

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KathyE57 said:
My turkey hen has layed about 10-12 now and is sitting all the time....however....the tom comes in and does his mating dance to get her off the eggs then sweeps a couple out and pecks and eats them! She gets right upset and tries to get them back from him. Is there a cure? Do I have to separate them? I really have no where else to put him though.

Thanks
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Oh please do separate them. Pen her up if you don't want to loose the whole clutch as I did
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I penned up the first hen that sat to separate her from the hen that was still laying and the toms. She sat on 18 eggs. Then the other hen started laying on a spot she chose outside. I put a dog house on top of it to protect the eggs from rain and let her be. She had 15 eggs when one morning I go out to check her only to find all 15 eggs scattered and eaten all over the place. I don't know if it was the toms or something else. We don't have amny predators where we live and eggs had holes and were not smashed.

I put her with the other hen (penned up) and provided a new nest to see if she'd start a new clutch but the next day I found her inside the first nest with her sister and chicks were already starting to hatch. So I lost her babies for this year... but the new chicks got an additional mom
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I have 2 hens on nests and our tom seems to be guarding them. He spends most of his time halfway between them and has also started sleeping on the floor near them. So, you shouldn't have to separate them.
 
It depends on the bird, like chickens when they learn that eggs are good to eat, they have to be separated from where the eggs are or remove the egg soon after they are layed. if a tom hasn't learned to eat the eggs, he can stay with the sitting hens, otherwise not.

on a side note: turkey hens make excellent surrogate mothers, my hens have taken over & hatched over 1/2 of my goose eggs, they see eggs & start brooding. I have one sitting on goose eggs now. after they hatch, the geese see the goslings & take over from there.
 
turkeys start laying eggs about 9 months old.
I have some that just started laying with in the last 2 weeks, I free range my birds & also give them corn in spring, summer & fall. in winter when there is no forage, I give them pellets & grain & any food scraps(they will eat just about anything).
my older ones layed in the spring for about 3 months then stopped. I had one that would jump the fence & lay in the woods, I tried leaving the eggs, so the bird would hatch them, but something got them. the ones that layed in the barn hatched out quite well
they usually stop in the winter, to use the energy to keep warm, it also depends on what their fed, like chickens the higher protein in the feed the more eggs that they will lay.
I'm not in it for the eggs anyway, but when I find them I take advantage of them.
 

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